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LUTHER BURNING THE POPE'S BULL. 



Frontispiece. 



GREAT THOUGHTS 



Little Thinkers 






LUCIA T. AMES 




NEW YORK & LONDON 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

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COPYRIGHT BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Press of 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York 



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TO 

MY LITTLE NIECE 
CLARA WINIFRED WARE 








CONTENTS. 



i. 

ii. 

in. 

IV. 

v. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII 

XXIII 

XXIV. 



Introduction 

What Little Thinkers Wonder About 
The First Thing that Ever Happened 

Hidden Forces 

How the Earth was Made Ready for 

Us 

How the First People Lived 

The World Grows Older and Wiser 

The New World .... 

The Story of Our People 

The Present Time .... 

A Time-Table of the Centuries . 

What is God ? 

What Are We ? 

Heaven and Hell .... 

What is the Devil ? 

S 



—Sin 



-What is the Bible ? ... 

-What is God's Word ? 
-The Hebrew Story of the Beginnings 
-Stories in Genesis .... 

-Isaac and His Children 

-The Land of Egypt 

-Moses ...... 

-The Ten Words .... 

-The Laws of the Hebrews 



PAGE 

I 

9 
14 
J 9 

25 
33 
43 
5° 
59 
69 

75 
79 
^3 
86 

93 

97 

101 

io 5 
no 

IT 5 
122 
127 
*35 
i39 
145 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXV. — The Promised Land .... 152 

XXVI. — Judges ....... 157 

XXVII. — The Old Prophet and the Young King 160 

XXVIII.— King David 165 

XXIX. — David's Troubles 170 

XXX. — King Solomon 176 

XXXI. — The Two Kingdoms .... 183 

XXXII — The Great Hebrew Prophets . . 190 

XXXIII.— Babylon 199 

XXXIV. — The Jews in Babylon and their Return 205 
XXXV. — The Jews Under their Masters . .211 

XXXVI.— The Greeks 220 

XXXVII.— The Romans ...... 229 

XXXVIII.— The Time When Jesus was Born . .239 
XXXIX.— The Two Preachers . . . .246 

XL. — The Christ 256 

XLI. — The Master and His Followers . . 265 

XLII. — The First Missionary .... 273 

XLIII. — The First Christians .... 284 

XLIV. — The World Moves 294 

XLV. — The Reformation, and What Came of It 304 
XLVI. — Thoughts About Every-Day Life ; or 

Ten Commandments for You and Me 314 

XLVII. — Last Thoughts 325 




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



OF A 



Luther Burning the Pope's Bull 

Forest in the Coal Period .... 

Strange Animals That Lived before Man 

Vase Found in an Ancient Tomb in Peru . 

Ancient Flint Instrument from New Jersey 

Rock Sculptures from South Africa 

Beads of Gold Found in Peru . 

Clay Tablet on Which is Written the Story 

King .... 
Idol Found in Phoenicia 
A Famous Tomb in Asia Minor 
A Castle in Western Europe 
Ruins in the East 
Landing of Columbus, 1492 
An Example of the Style of Letters and Pictures 

in the Books Which Were First Printed 

Chart of the Ages 

Hebrew Writing 

Greek Writing 

Back of Tablet with Account of the Flood 
The Pyramids and the Sphinx . 

The Tabernacle 

Solomon's Temple * 



Frontispiece 
27 
29 
34 
35 
37,38 
39 



face 



43 

44 
47 
5i 

5 2 

55 

57 
77 
101 
102 
116 
131 
147 
181 



* Reduced from a plate in the work on Solomon's Temple by Timothy 
Otis Paine, by permission of the author and of his publishers, Houghton, 
Mifflin, & Co. 



viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Palace of the King of Assyria 187 

Temple of Assyria 201 

Piling Heads of Captives 203 

Athens 223 

Roman Aqueduct, or Watercourse . . . .231 
Arch Built in Honor of the Roman Emperor Con- 

stantine 233 

Roman Soldiers . . 237 

Jesus and Mary 259 

Jerusalem, First Century 275 

Mohammed 295 

Mosque in Spain 297 

St. Peter's and the Pope s Palace at Rome . . 301 

Luther Burning the Pope's Bull .... 305 



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GREAT THOUGHTS 

FOR LITTLE THINKERS 



INTKODUCTION. 



IN his recent volume entitled, "The Idea of 
God," Mr. John Fiske thus describes his earliest 
conception of the Deity : 

" I remember distinctly the conception which I had 
formed when five years of age. I imagined a nar- 
row office just over the zenith, with a tall standing- 
desk running lengthwise, upon which lay several open 
ledgers bound in coarse leather. There was no roof 
over this office, and the walls rose scarcely five feet 
from the floor, so that a person standing at the desk 
could look out on the whole world. There were 
two persons at the desk, and one of them — a tall, slen- 
der man of aquiline features, wearing spectacles, with 
a pen in his hand and another behind his ear — was 
God. The other, whose appearance I do not dis- 
tinctly recall, was an attendant angel. Both were 
diligently watching the deeds of men, and recording 



2 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

thern in the ledgers. To my infant mind this 
picture was not grotesque, but ineffably solemn." 

That the child's conception was in any way excep- 
tional, few students of child-life would maintain. 
Indeed, were it possible for us, by a clairvoyance 
born of sympathy and philosophic insight, to fathom 
the workings of the imagination in these tiny mor- 
tals, " moving about in worlds not realized," we 
should be startled, perhaps amused, certainly per- 
plexed, at the ideas we should find there not only of 
God, but of the world and every thing in it. 

Yet how naive and frank the natural, unspoiled 
child ! He chatters all day of his plays and his pets ; 
he pours his childish confidences into our ears, and 
we, looking into his clear eyes, fancy, with a conceit 
bred of ignorance, that we read his thoughts like an 
open book, and see to the depths of his artless na- 
ture. But beneath any thought which the child can 
express in language, or even acknowledge to himself, 
lie fanciful images, crude ideas, and vague purposes, 
of which he is himself hardly conscious, and which 
nevertheless are abiding there, influencing him for 
good or ill, and to endure perhaps forever. These 
form the background of his maturer thinking and in- 
delibly color it. Try as he may, never can he wholly 
free himself from them. 

As an illustration of early and untraceable impres- 
sions, the writer would adduce the fact that from 
earliest childhood until now all her mathematical 



IN TR OD UC TION. 3 

processes, all thoughts of ages or dates have been 
based on a scheme of numbers which presented them- 
selves to the imagination as arranged on a definite 
system of lines and angles rising to different alti- 
tudes. The distinct consciousness that this system 
of numbers was different from that conceived by 
other minds was not discovered until mature years. 
Datino; from some subtile and unremembered influ- 
ences, it has now become ineradicably woven into 
the very fabric of thought. 

We are gradually coming to see that in all depart- 
ments of pedagogical science none require more genius, 
none are of so profound, import, as those that first point 
out to the awakening mind the lines of beauty and 
duty which it henceforth must follow, and that sup- 
ply materials for the imagination, unmixed with sci- 
entific or religious error which all the acquired 
knowledge of ripe age can never wholly eradicate. 

Probably there was never a time when the prob- 
lem of early religious training was so perplexing. 
The age of catechisms and definite, dogmatic teach- 
ing offered few dilemmas such as now present them- 
selves to the conscientious parent or teacher who, 
while awakening to the results of this age of search- 
ing criticism, is at the same time imbued with' that 
spirit of reverence which marks all deeply spiritual 
life. Such a one is frequently confronted in the pert 
child of the present day with an incipient scepticism 
engendered by indifference to Divine and parental 



4 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS, 

authority, which seems to be the inevitable outcome 
of our national vice of self-assertiveness. 

He himself may remember the stern Puritanical 
teaching of his childhood, which, in spite of its nar- 
rowness in regard to plenary inspiration and the lit- 
eral interpretation of the Bible, did inculcate a spirit 
of reverence and conscientiousness, and a profound 
sense of responsibility too often wanting in the mod- 
ern child. And in what way these most priceless 
results of all teaching shall be impressed upon his 
child, born into a peculiarly pleasure-loving and self- 
indulgent age, becomes to him a question of para- 
mount importance. 

Shall he, abandoning the older and sterner phrase- 
ology, yet from some superstitious belief in its moral 
efficacy, allow his child to receive the same crude teach- 
ings which were given him ? Or shall he permit him 
to receive none but home instruction, and keeping him 
carefully ignorant of all doctrinal questions and per- 
plexing Hebrew history, instruct him in moral truths 
until an age when spiritual truths may be spiritually 
discerned, and early materialistic conceptions thus 
be avoided ? Shall he on the other hand, courageously 
grapple with the increasingly perplexing prob- 
lems of our day, not daring to withhold any truth 
from his child which he himself believes and which 
is fitted for the child's comprehension ? If the last 
be his choice, as we trust it may be, how shall this 
home instruction be harmonized with such Sunday- 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

school teaching as gives the child to understand that 
Satan created sin, and that there was never a rainbow 
before the flood ; or which teaches Old Testament and 
New Testament history in rapid alternation, before the 
first principles of geography or general history have 
been learned, thus giving the child fragmentary and 
confused notions, and so making it possible for a 
bright little girl of the writer's acquaintance to ima- 
gine that Jerusalem is not far from New York, and 
to place Hezekiah after Paul, in point of time, be- 
cause the lesson on the king came shortly after that 
on the apostle ? Conversely, how shall the Sunday- 
school teacher instruct when erroneous views are in- 
culcated in the home ? 

How shall children be made to feel the profound- 
ness of spiritual truths independent of their historic 
setting ? How shall the essential be presented apart 
from the non-essential ? These, and similar problems, 
peculiar to our time, are confronting an ever increas- 
ing number of parents and teachers, too often, alas, 
finding no solution on account of their timidity, in- 
difference, or incompetence. 

In many a Christian family the one hour in a week 
of Sunday-school songs and lessons constitutes the 
only definite religious instruction which the children 
ever receive. Memorizing Scripture is unfortunately 
becoming obsolete. Blackboard sketches with col- 
ored crayons and " lesson helps " of all sorts are tak- 
ing the place of study. Picnics and Christmas trees, 



6 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

silk banners, jingling tunes, and other devices, are 
necessarily resorted to in the endeavor to entice the 
children of the present day to give their attention to 
any thing serious. 

That the Sunday-school is a noble institution and 
is doing a grand work, no observant person will deny. 
But even under the best possible system of instruc- 
tion the Sunday-school alone is wholly inadequate 
for the religious education ; and small excuse can 
the Christian parent offer for neglecting to inform 
himself as to the teaching which his children receive 
there and wisely supplementing it. 

The solicitude shown by many parents in the selec- 
tion of a French master competent to impart a cor- 
rect accent, or of a music teacher who shall have 
proper ideas of touch, is in striking contrast to the 
indifference with which they resign their children to 
the spiritual teachings of any immature girl or half- 
educated person whose good intentions are apparent, 
but who has little capacity for the difficult task. 

The age furnishes many evidences of the disastrous 
effects on mature minds gradually awakening to the 
fact that many cherished beliefs of childhood, round 
which were linked the most sacred memories, must 
be relinquished. Sad indeed is the fact that the 
gold and dross of thought having been once amalga- 
mated, can never be disunited but by the furnace 
fires of doubt and suffering ; sadder still the knowl- 
edge that when man's tradition has been taken for 



IX TROD UC TIO AT. ? 

God's truth, the truth itself has beeu discredited 
when the tradition is found to be but a tradition. 

The present volume has had a natural genesis. It 
has grown out of a desire to help one dear little 
child, whose quaint fancies and crude conceptions 
had lain all unexpressed until elicited by careful, 
questioning, to the amazement and frequent amuse- 
ment of the writer, who has become convinced after 
a careful search through current juvenile literature 
that there is a need for something which shall sup- 
plement the home and school instruction for young 
children. 

While recognizing the fact that earlv religious in- 
struction, unlike teaching in mathematics or science, 
must generally be presented in an authoritative way 
without giving all the grounds for the statements 
made, the endeavor has been to teach only that 
which the rational mind would verify when mature 
years were reached. 

Having specially in mind the children of fair- 
minded parents of all Protestant denominations, the 
writer has omitted for the most part those Bible 
stories which they will be sure to learn elsewhere, 
and such doctrinal teaching as should be reserved 
for later years, and then presented in the form which 
each parent thinks best. 

AVith a profound appreciation of the difficulties 
involved, the attempt has been made to present in 
as simple language and as definite form as possible, 



8 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

an outline of those fundamental truths in science, 
history, religion, and morals which shall be a basis 
for all later thought, with the hope that however 
inadequate, it may at least serve as a stepping-stone 
to something better than was taught most of the 
children of the previous generation. 

L. T. A. 







CHAPTER I 

WHAT LITTLE THINKERS WONDER ABOUT. 

I ONCE heard a little girl say : "O I hate to 
have the people who write books say : ' Now 
my dear little readers ! ' " Perhaps you feel just as 
she did, so I shall try to be very particular never 
once to call you " a dear little reader." But whether 
you are a little reader or not, I am sure you are a 
little thinker, and I hope you will not care if I call 
you that, for I want to tell you a great deal about 
thinkers and thoughts which I have found very 
delightful. You see, in spite of the pictures, this 
is not a story-book — not a book of those charming 
tales which you like to read over and over again, and 
with which you cuddle down in the corner of the 
sofa and keep as still as a mouse for an hour. 

No, I will tell you truly in the beginning, 
this book is neither a Sunday-school book nor a 
day-school book, nor a story-book, and will not be 
very funny or exciting, and not at all the kind of 
book which I want you to sit down and read straight 
through from beginning to end, and then lay aside. 



IO GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

What I would like is to have some one read a few 
pages to you at a time, and let you think about them 
a little before going on. 

Probably you all go to Sunday-school and have 
begun to learn about a great many things which you 
find rather hard to understand. 

No doubt some of you have learned little verses, 
such as " God is love," and " Blessed are the peace- 
makers," from that big book called the Bible, out of 
which the minister reads every Sunday. Of course 
all of you can say the Lord's Prayer, and have 
heard a good deal about Some One with whom you 
are not yet well acquainted, and who, you hear, is 
your best friend. But still I suppose there are very 
many things which you hear grown people say about 
God, and about church, and the Bible that are not 
very interesting to you, and you cannot understand 
how any one can really like to talk about them. 

You see I know how you feel, because I used to 
feel just so myself when I was a little girl. But 
after a great while I learned something which I 
wish to tell you ; it was that as I grew older and 
understood better I came to enjoy many things 
which at first I felt sure I could never like. When 
I was a baby, and liked to play with bright ribbons 
and blocks, I suppose I thought it very queer to see 
the older children laugh at the black marks on 
white paper which they called "funny stories." I 
must have thought it would be no fun for me to 



WHAT LITTLE THINKERS WONDER ABOUT. II 

spend an hour looking at a book, for it would nave 
meant nothing to rue. 

So when I grew older and beo;an to learn about 
the great world in which we live; and of the names 
of cities in far-away countries, and the languages 
that the little French and German boys speak, I 
thought, at first, I should never like to know about 
them. I cared more to read the " Prudy " books or 
some nice fairy story ; but every year, as time went 
on, I kept finding that the tilings I had at first 
thought very tiresome were delightful after all. 
And so I hope you will find it, in the little talks we 
are going to have together at bedtime, and on Sun- 
day afternoons, when the playthings and lessons are 
put away, and you all gather around me for a little 
quiet talk about the great thoughts which have 
helped the world, and which I am sure little think- 
ers such as you can understand. 

First of all, I want to tell you a very strange 
thing ; every year, as you do more and more think- 
ing, every thing in the world will seem more and 
more wonderful to you. Xovr you would expect it 
to be just the other way ; you would think a little 
baby coming into the world and finding all things 
new and strange would be very much surprised at 
every thing at first, and after a while would grow so 
used to things that when he was grown up he would 
uo longer wonder at an)' thing. Perhaps it is so 
with savage people or very stupid persons, who 



12 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

never think ; but with those who learn and think, 
the wonder always grows. 

Little children do not wonder much about things ; 
they take them all for granted ; and it is only after 
they have lived many years that they begin to find 
out how very wonderful are the dewdrops, and the 
leaves, and bits of coal, and all the common, every- 
day things. 

"What do you think is the most wonderful thing 
ever made ? Eleanor answers : " A watch " ; Harry 
says : " A steam-engine." Not a bit of it. The 
most wonderful thing in the world is a thinker, that 
is to say, a human being. The dirtiest, ugliest little 
beggar-boy you ever saw is far more wonderful than 
Niagara Falls, or the ocean, or a grand cathedral. 

Did you ever think how strange it is that the milk 
and meat, apples, puddings, and other good things 
that we eat, turn into our bones, blood, finger-nails, 
and hair, into eyes that see and ears that hear ? 
Have you thought what makes your heart beat right 
along every day and every night, when you are 
asleep and when you are awake, all through your 
life ? Perhaps you have heard some Bible stories 
about miracles ; but there never was any miracle 
more wonderful than this, and the reason it does not 
seem so is that it happens every day. 

Doubtless all the little folks to whom I am talk- 
ing are old enough to have begun to wonder. You 
wonder how large the stars are, and what they are 



WHAT LITTLE THINKERS WONDER ABOUT. 1 3 

made of ; you wonder how the world was made, 
how the first animals looked, — how the first baby 
looked ; and if you are a very little girl, perhaps 
you wonder if this baby had a little crib and bath- 
tub, and wore pretty white dresses like your baby 
brother. Sometimes you ask mamma about these 
things, and she says, perhaps : " Run away, now, 
pet, I am too busy to answer," or " You are not old 
enough yet to understand " ; or, perhaps, if the 
question is a very queer one, your big brother laughs 
and calls you a " little goosie," and you feel hurt 
and do not dare to ask the next time. 

You see I remember how I used to feel when I 
was a little girl ; and so, as I am not too busy, and 
as I like little boys and girls who wonder about 
things and ask questions, I am going to tell you of 
some of the things I used to wonder about. Some- 
times I asked questions, and had the right answer, 
and sometimes the wrong one ; and I never found out 
until I grew up what the true answer was, and so I 
got very queer and foolish ideas, which took me a 
long time to unlearn. 

In the next talk I will tell you about the very first 
thing that e«ver happened. 




CHAPTEE II. 

THE FIEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED. 

I SUPPOSE you have been told many times that 
God created you and every thing else in the 
world also. Now do you know what the word 
create means? It means to make something out of 
nothing. 

When you hear people say : " God created," it 
means that He simply thought something, and it was 
instantly made. 

If you wanted to make a kite, would you " create " 
one ? Let us see. You would get some paper and 
sticks and paste, and put them together in the shape 
you wanted, and thus make a kite ; but you could 
not make either the sticks or the paper ! They were 
made for you by some one else. You did not " cre- 
ate " the kite, because you did not make it out of 
nothing. We cannot do this. 

Only God can create. He makes every thing 
simply by thinking, because His thinking is different 
from our thinking. This is very wonderful, and 
even grown people do not understand it very well ; 

14 



THE FIRST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED. I 5 

but we know it is so, for we see it could not be auy 
other way. 

You have been told that God never sleeps, and 
this is true. He is always thinking; and, as He 
creates things by thinking, He must always be 
creating. 

This is one of the things about which I used to 
wonder when I was a little girl. I supposed that 
God was asleep, or at least that He kept quiet for a 
great while, and then made up His mind that He 
would make the world ; and so He spoke, and at 
once the earth was made, and afterwards the stars 
and the sun and moon. 

Some people think so now, but it is a mistake. 
We know that God is the same all the time. He 
never changes ; so that it could not have been pos- 
sible for Him to have been quiet a great many years, 
and then all of a sudden have changed and begun to 
create. He has always been creating, and the stars 
we see in the sky at night were made before the 
earth on which we live be^an to be. 

When you grow older you will understand how 
we know that the stars were made first. At present 
it would be hard to make you understand it. But 
there is one thing I can tell you about the stars that 
you can understand. These bright little things in 
the sky that seem so small, are really a great deal 
larger than the earth ; the reason why they look so 
small is because they are so very far away, just as a 



1 6 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

boy who is a mile off looks no larger than a pin when 
you hold it out at arm's length. 

Did you ever notice how the whole room is lighted 
the instant some one touches a blazing match to the 
gas ? We say " quick as a flash," for a flash of light 
is the quickest thing we know. I remember going 
into the country on Decoration Day, and standing on 
a hill where I could look a long way off. I saw a 
procession winding along the road to the cemetery. 
All at once there was a flash and a puff of smoke, 
and after waiting long enough to count ten or twelve, 
the noise of the report came, and I knew the people 
had been firing a cannon over the soldiers' graves. 
They did it again and again, and every time I saw the 
flash some time before I heard the sound, and then I 
remembered how I had learned that light travels a 
great deal faster than sound. 

Perhaps you will think I have forgotten what I 
began to say about the stars, but I have not. Now 
that I have shown you how fast the light travels, I 
want to give you a little idea of how far away some 
of the stars are. Only listen to this. The star-light 
which will shine down upon us to-night started a 
long while ago, before your father or your grand- 
father was born, and has been travelling like light- 
ning all these years, and yet has only just reached 
the earth ! Of course you cannot imagine this or 
picture it to yourself, no one can, but we know it is 
true. 



THE FIRST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED, I? 

Some wise men have made a curious instrument 
called a telescope, and when you look through it the 
stars, and sun, and moon seem much nearer and plainer 
to you, just as your mamma's opera-glass makes the 
people across the street seem nearer. These wise 
men have worked hard for many years, and have sat 
up all night in high, cold towers studying with their 
telescopes the far-away, shining worlds that we call 
the stars. Then they print what they have learned 
in books and papers, so we may know about it too. 

God has always been creating, and is creating 
now. The worlds of which I have been telling you 
were not created all solid and round in an instant. 
It took a great many thousand years to form them 
into the shape which they now have. 

The more we study God's ways of making the 
world, the more we shall see that He works very 
slowly, not creating things complete all at once, but 
letting them form slowly and grow gradually from 
one form to a higher and more perfect one ; just as a 
little shoot grows into a large tree and a weak little 
baby into a strong man. 

Perhaps you think if God works so slowly it can- 
not be creation. Yes, it is creation ; we cannot call 
it by any other name. For nothing makes itself or 
grows of itself. God's spirit is behind every thing 
and in every thing, making it grow. He makes all 
things in the beginning, and is constantly changing 
them and making them take new forms, or " develop," 
as we say. 



1 8 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

I said I would tell you in this chapter the first 
thing that ever happened. I think you have found 
out what it is. The first thing was God's creating 
something out of nothing. But, you remember, I 
said He was always creating, so it is hardly correct 
to say that He did any thing " first." 

There never was any beginning or any " first " 
with Him. Do not get puzzled about this, or tire 
your little heads by trying to imagine it or picture 
it to yourself. No one ever can imagine it, but we 
can think it, and know that it must be so. There 
are a great many things that we cannot imagine at 
all, but we can think, and reason, and know about 
them, and this is one of those things. 




CHAPTEK III. 

HIDDEN FORCES. 

SOME of the worlds that were created, and 
which Ave see in the sky, are bright, burn- 
ing suns, just like our sun. Others are like the 
earth, which was once fire but now has become cold 
and hard, at least on the outside, so that men can 
live on it. Probably some are like the moon, which 
has no water, and is a cold, barren place, where it is 
not likely that any one lives. 

No doubt you all have heard that the earth is 
round like a ball, and not flat, as in old times it was 
thought to be. 

We know it is round, because people have sailed 
round it and come back to the place they started 
froni, just as a tiny ant walks around your brother's 
big football, and comes back to the spot where he 
started, reaching it from the opposite side of the 
ball. 

There are other reasons why we know that the 
earth is shaped like a ball, but I will not wait to 
talk about them now. Of course it is very hard at 

T9 



20 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

first for us to think of the world as round, for 
it looks fiat, but we shall find, as we go on learning, 
that almost every thing is cliff event from what it seems 
to be at first. 

I used to wonder why it was that the people on the 
other side of the earth did not fall off. I thought 
their heads would be down and their feet would be 
up, and it was a long time before I understood about 
it. I am afraid the little people who have not be- 
gun to study geography will not understand about 
it, but I will do my best to explain. 

When you see a horse draw a heavy wagon, you 
know there is power, or force, in the horse's body ; 
when you throw a ball, you do it by the power that 
is in your arm ; when you see a man rowing a boat 
against the stream, you know he does it by the same 
kind of force or power. This kind of power 
is very common, and we can see and understand it 
perfectly well. 

But the strongest forces in the world are the hid- 
den forces — that is, those we cannot see. These lift 
the greatest weights and draw the greatest burdens. 

When water freezes, it swells and takes up more 
room than it did before, and sometimes when a little 
water drips down into a crack in a great rock, it 
freezes, and the force which it uses in swelling and 
making more room for itself is so great that it bursts 
the rock into pieces, which crash down the mountain 
side, cutting down trees and destroying every thing 



HIDDEN FORCES. 21 

in the way. It might have taken the strength of a 
hundred men to break the rock in two and do what 
the water did simply by freezing. This is what I 
call a "hidden force." 

Another hidden force is in the growing plants. 
Those who study a great deal about plants have 
found out some wonderful things. They have 
fastened a great many pounds of heavy weights to 
squashes and watermelons and other green, grow- 
ing things, in such a Avay that if the plant grew, 
and spread outward and upward, it would have lifted 
these heavy weights, and they have found that the 
lifting force in these little tender-looking stems was 
so great one could hardly believe it; sometimes 
they would lift a greater weight than a horse could 
bear. 

There is another wonderful hidden force which I 
think you have heard of, although it has quite a long, 
hard name. But you need not be afraid of long 
words ; if you only understand what they mean they 
are just as easy to use as short ones. You know it is 
quite as easy to talk about an elephant as a cow, 
although the word " elephant " is a long one. 

Well, the name of this strong hidden force of 
which I speak is electricity. You have all seen elec- 
tric lights, and heard of the telegraph, and have 
perhaps spoken through the telephone. These mar- 
vellous things, which are such a help to us that we 
hardly know how we could get on without them, 



22 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

are all due to the wonderful electric fluid, which we 
can neither smell, nor see, nor hear. 

It moves as fast as lightning, and in fact it is what 
causes lightning. It can do a great deal of harm to 
people who meddle with it without knowing how 
to use it, but to those who do know how to use it, 
it is like a good horse who goes just where he is 
driven. 

There are a great many other hidden forces, and 
one of the strongest of these is the one which compels 
every thing on the earth to get as near to the ground 
as possible. You know when you drop a ball, or a 
book, or any thing, it never flies up to the sky, but 
falls as near the earth as it can. Of course you have 
always known this, but perhaps you never thought 
much about it. This is one of the things which wise 
men think very wonderful ; but children never think 
it strange, because they have not learned that the 
commonest things are the most wonderful. 

Now this strong power draws every thing to the 
earth and makes it impossible for any one to fall off 
it or to get away from it. If it were not for this 
strange power drawing every thing, especially heavy 
things, down to the earth, loose things would stay 
up in the air as easily as down on the ground. 

The reason balloons and light, fleecy clouds do 
not fall to the earth, is that they are lighter than the 
air, and the air crowds down and pushes them up 
out of the way. When the clouds get black and 



HIDDEN FORCES. 2$ 

heavy and weigh more than the air, they fall down 
to the earth and break up into little streams and 
drops of water, and we call it " rain." 

I have been telling yon all this, partly because it 
is one of the " Great Thoughts " which you " Little 
Thinkers" can understand, although it took wise 
people many years to think it all out, and partly 
because I want to have you see that the little 
Chinese boys and girls on the other side of the 
world walk upon the ground and look up to the sky 
above them just as we do, even though their feet are 
turned toward our feet and their heads and ours 
point in opposite directions. 

When we say " down " it means simply toward the 
earth, and when we say " up " it means away from 
the earth. 

This great power that draws every thing so 
strongly toward the centre of the earth, is the same 
kind of power which holds the stars and sun and 
moon in their places ; for each one draws the other, 
and as each star is drawn on all sides by the other 
stars all around it, it is kept in its place. 

Is it not wonderful that these great, shining 
worlds, which are so far off that they look like mere 
specks, should be able to send out this strange hid- 
den force through all the millions and millions of 
empty miles that separate one from another ? 

I am sure that by this time all my Little Thinkers 
must have begun to wonder a great deal. I hope 



24 



GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 



you have a great many questions to ask, and will be 
sure to tell them to papa or mamma, and see if you 
cannot find out a great many new things this week 
about the strong, hidden forces of which I have told 
you a little. 





CHAPTEE IV. 

HOW THE EARTH WAS MADE READY EOR US. 

I ONCE asked a bright little girl seven years old, 
what she supposed was the very first thing 
which was made on the earth after the earth itself 
was made, and she promptly replied : " Sidewalks ! " 

I tried not to laugh at this funny answer, and in- 
quired if men did not have to be made first in order 
to make the sidewalks. I then asked what people 
lived on while they were beginning to make side- 
walks and other things, and she said : " O they had 
bread and butter that they could buy at the store." 

You see it was very hard for her to think back to 
a time when there were no stores to sell flour, no 
flour to make bread, no mills to grind wheat, no men 
to gather wheat, and no wheat to be ground. When, 
in short, there was nothing but land and water. 

Now I want to help you to try and think back to 
this time when, after the sun and stars had been 
made, our earth, which is so much smaller than they, 
began its wonderful history. It has taken thousands 
of years to find out the little that we know about it, 

25 



26 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Many things that happened away back in that far-off 
time we shall never know, but what we have learned 
is very interesting and important, for it makes us 
understand our own life better, and, more than that, 
it helps us to get better acquainted with the great 
Maker of all things, and to find out how He lives 
and works. When we learn about the things which 
He has made, we are, as a great man said, " thinking 
God's thoughts after Him." 

After the earth had finally become a round mass, 
and was travelling on its yearly course around the 
sun, it was all the while being made ready for a 
home for us. But slowly, slowly, very slowly, the 
changes came. It took millions of years before it 
was ready. 

If we could have been in the world in that far-away 
time, we should have seen very strange sights. 
Many of the places which now are covered with 
fertile fields and villages and towns were then under 
water, and the salt sea ebbed and flowed where they 
now are. 

Before there were any animals the plant life began. 
Many kinds of plants were different from those that 
we see now. Very large ferns, as tall as trees, cov- 
ered much of the country, and huge trees, like the 
pines and palms, made thick forests. Do you know 
what became of them ? It was such a very strange 
thing that if you have not been told you never can 
guess it. Many of these trees and plants which 



28 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

grew so thickly together fell, and in course of time 
were pressed down tight upon one another, and in 
some of the curious changes which the earth went 
through, they were covered with water, or earth and 
stones, which kept the air from them, and after a 
while they were changed into coal. All the coal-beds 
lying underground in so many parts of the world, 
and which are so useful to us, were once green, 
growing plants and trees. All this change took 
more time than we can possibly imagine. 

It is very hard even for a grown man to imagine 
what a long time one million years is, and when we 
say many millions, no one can possibly imagine it ; 
but, as I said before, there are many things, and 
some of them are the most important ones, that we 
can know, even if we cannot imagine them. 

Wise men who have studied about the growth and 
history of the earth, do not all agree about the order 
in which the different kinds of animal life began. 
We think it is very certain, however, that what we 
call the lowest forms of life — the sponges, oysters, 
and fishes — came first. After that came insects, 
snakes, and slimy, crawling things, and later came 
the birds and the four-legged animals. 

Many of these creatures that li\ r ed all those years 
before men came on the earth were larger than ele- 
phants, or any animals living in our times. Some- 
times their bones are dug up, and we can see what 
huge and terrible creatures they must have been. 



HOW THE EARTH WAS MADE READY FOR US. 29 

When I was a little girl I saw in a museum the 
bones of a great animal which was ninety feet long. 
The bones had changed and were as hard as stone, 
and some of them were missing, but there were 
enough to show what kind of a creature he was, and 
it made one shiver to think what a horrid monster he 
must have been when he was alive. 




STRANGE ANIMALS THAT LIVED BEFORE MAN. 

Until a few years ago we knew almost nothing 
about what happened on this earth before men lived 
here ; but since your grandpapa was a little boy many 
hundreds of men in different parts of the world 
have been studying the habits of plants and ani- 
mals. They have examined the stars with their tele- 
scopes, and the flowers with their microscopes ; they 
have studied the winds and the clouds, the rocks, the 
rivers, and the mountains, and so have found out many 
secrets which lay hidden out of sight for untold ages. 



30 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS, 

Each one found out a few new facts, and as soon 
as he had done so he told them to the world, and so, 
in a short time, more things were discovered than 
had ever been known before in all the thousands of 
years since men had begun to wonder about this 
wonderful world. 

Some parts of the earth used to be much warmer 
than they are now. The lion and elephant and 
other animals that you have seen in the circus 
processions, and which live in warm countries, used 
to live farther north than we do, where now it is 
cold. We are sure of this because their bones are 
often found there in the ground and in caves. 

After a while, however, the climate began to grow 
much colder, the animals went farther south, and the 
country where we live was all covered with ice. 
Sometimes we find deep scratches on the rocks 
which we know were made when this great sheet of 
ice came from the north and covered the country. 
It took thousands of years for this ice to disappear. 

We do not know in what part of the earth men 
lived first. Perhaps they began to live in several 
different parts at once. We know very little about 
the first people who lived on the earth, only we are 
very sure they were almost as low down as some of 
the higher animals. 

We feel pretty sure that the higher kinds of ani- 
mals came from lower kinds of animal life, and 
these, in their turn, from still lower forms ; so we 



HOW THE EARTH WAS MADE READY FOR US. 3 1 

think it likely that creatures were gradually and 
slowly changed from the highest kind of an animal, 
which was possibly somewhat like an ape, into the 
form of body which we now have. Instead of walk- 
ing on four legs, they learned to stand upright and 
to do many things which animals cannot do. At last, 
when the right time had come, God put into these 
bodies spirits like His own because they can live 
forever. And so men came to be on this earth and 
were children of God, though it was a long time be- 
fore they knew much about their Father. 

The mind of man grew slowly, and after a while 
he came to know himself and to think of himself as 
different from other creatures. He invented Icni- 
gucige, and this was the beginning of his life as a 
spirit. 

Let us stop a moment now and look back over 
these millions of years and think once again of the 
slow, wonderful changes by which the earth was 
made ready for us. 

First, the crust, or outside, slowly grew hard and 
cold ; the seas were slowly formed, and then came the 
beginnings of plant life by which the world was pre- 
pared for the animals. For, of course, animals could 
not have lived unless plants had first been made for 
them to feed upon. 

Then came the different grades of animals, begin- 
ning with those that have very little feeling, like 
sponges, clams, and oysters, and after that going on 



32 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

to fishes and creeping things that have bones, and 
eyes, and the power to move about from place to 
place. You can easily see that these are much 
higher than clams and oysters and snails. 

Then came the still more intelligent animals, and, 
last of all, when the world had been made ready for 
man's body, and his body had been made ready for 
his spirit, there came that new creature, the highest 
and most wonderful of all, a being who could think 
and talk and make inventions, one who had the 
power to know Grod and who was to live forever. 

It almost takes one's breath away to make this 
quick jump over all these long ages. 

Thousands of men have worked hard all their 
lives and suffered much in order to find out and give 
to us these great secrets about the world and man. 
Thousands of books have been written about these 
things, and I have tried to tell you a little about them 
in a simple way, so that you shall begin to get right 
ideas about the world, and about God and man, and 
not fill your heads with queer notions of your own 
which you will have to unlearn when you are older. 




CHAPTER V. 

HOW THE FIKST PEOPLE LIVED. 

THERE are several ways by which we find out 
how men used to live, ages ago, before they 
knew how to write and kept records of what they 
did. 

One way is to learn how the wild savages live 
now. There are many such people in the world, and 
by studying their habits, we learn how men always 
live before they become civilized. 

Another way to learn about the early peoples, is 
to study the bones and bits of earthen dishes and 
stone arrow-heads and other things they have left, 
which we often find buried in the ground in such 
places that we know they must have belonged to those 
who lived thousands of years ago. 

We suppose that, at first, men lived much like 
animals, eating raw meat and fruit with their fingers, 
and sleeping on the ground out-doors or in caves. 

They probably lived first in warm countries and 
did not need much clothing. It is supposed that 
they did not live in separate families, as we do, but 

33 



34 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

all lived more like animals, who do not care much 
for their little ones after they get old enough to take 
care of themselves. 

People knew very little about what was right and 
wrong, and used to quarrel and fight and kill each 
other somewhat as animals do. 




VASE FOUND IN AN ANCIENT TOMB IN PERU. 

The men were larger and stronger than the women, 
and so it came about that among these ignorant peo- 
ple the women were often looked down upon and 
treated like slaves. For thousands and thousands of 
years men thought women were not of so much im- 
portance as they were themselves, and, because they 
were large and strong, they had their own way and 
did many unjust and selfish things. 

It was only after they came to know about the 



HO IV THE FIRST PEOPLE LIVED. 



35 



true God and to learn how much more He cares for 
our spirits than our bodies, that men began to find 
out that a sweet, lovely spirit, although it were in a 
poor, weak body, is more beautiful in the eyes of 
God than any thing else. After men had come to 
learn the law of love, they found 
that many a tender, patient mother 
might be nobler than a great general 
who had won famous battles. 

At first there were no knives, or 
tools, or any thing made of iron. 
The only things that men had to cut 
with were sharp pieces of flint and 
other kinds of stone. They chipped 
these into the shape of arrow-heads 
and fastened them on the end of 
sticks and used them for spears. 

For very many years men had no 
tools but these stone ones, and so 
we call this the Stone A^e. A 
great many of these stone knives 
and arrow-heads have been found. 
I have seen hundreds of them my- 
self. Sometimes they are so rough 
you can hardly tell them from a 
common stone that you might find in some rocky 
pasture. Others are better made, and some are smooth 
and polished. 

These sharp stones that would cut, were the great- 




ANCIENT FLINT 

INSTRUMENT FROM 

NEW JERSEY. 



36 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

est treasures a man could have. Without them he 
could not kill any animals and so get meat to eat and 
skins to wear ; he could not clean the skins without 
something sharp to scrape them with. He could not 
cut down trees to make poles for his tents ; and in 
fact he could do almost nothing until he had made 
something that would cut. 

Animals have hair or fur on their backs, but man 
has nothing to cover him until he makes it for him- 
self. Animals have teeth, and claws, and horns 
given them for defending themselves when they are 
attacked ; but man has nothing with which to fight 
until he makes it. You see human beings are very 
helpless until they learn how to make tools and use 
them. 

The world is full of so many comfortable and con- 
venient things now that it is very hard for us to 
imagine how different it must have seemed to these 
poor, ignorant people. 

If some one could have taught them, I suppose 
they would have learned almost as quickly as 
we can. But there was no one to teach them. 
They had to find out every thing for themselves, 
and so they did not know nearly so much about 
most things as a little child four years old knows 
now. 

After a while some one learned how to make fire, 
and that was a great gain. Probably it was the most 
important discovery ever made. 



HOW THE FIRST PEOPLE LIVED. 



37 



They also learned to tame wild goats and cattle, 
which then gave them milk. You know all animals 
were wild at first. It was a long time before horses 
and cows and dogs became tame, so that they would 
live with men and work for them. 

After a time people learned to plant seeds and to 




ROCK SCULPTURES [MADE BY SAVAGES IN SOUTH AFRICA]. 

raise crops of grain. They ground the grain into 
flour or meal of a coarse sort, by means of a little 
hand-mill made of stone, and then mixed it with 
water, and, as they had learned how to make fire, 
they could bake it into cakes. 

Their food was veiy coarse and simple. They 



38 



GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 



had no sugar until a later time, and of course they 
never dreamed of all the nice things that we have to 
eat. 

They found iron, and tin, and copper, and bright 
shining gold in the earth. After a long, long time 
they learned how to melt these and make them into 
different shapes. Then they no longer needed the 




ROCK SCULPTURES FROM SOUTH AFRICA. 

rough stone hatchets and spears, for they made much 
better ones out of metal. 

They made pots and dishes out of moist clay, and 
baked them hard and dry. A great many broken 
pieces of these have been found. Sometimes they 
have been colored black, or red, or yellow, and have 
wavy lines or dots on them. 



HOW THE FIRST PEOPLE LIVED. 



39 



Sometimes pieces of bone, with rude carvings of 
animals, have been found buried in the ground, and 
we learn from them that the people who lived so 
long ago were not satisfied with just getting enough 
to eat and drink and wear ; they liked pretty things 




BEADS OF GOLD FOUND IN PERU. 



also. They used the gold which they found for 
making rings and necklaces. Several of the beads 
that you see in the picture are very pretty, and show 
that those who made them had good taste. 

As time went on, and people found they could get 
food and clothing much easier than at first, they had 



40 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

more time for other work, and so they discovered 
many new things. 

With their new hatchets they could cut down 
trees much easier than with their old stone knives, 
and so they made rafts and boats out of the trees. 
In these they could travel quickly from one place to 
another, and could bring home in their boats what- 
ever they had found. This, of course, saved time, 
and was much easier than walking and carrying 
things on their backs. 

As time went on they learned to use wheels, and 
found them a great help in getting over the ground 
quickly whenever there was a good road ; but as 
there were very few good roads, people usually were 
carried on the backs of camels or mules. 

The first kind of clothing that was worn was made 
of the skins of animals. Afterwards, people learned 
how to make cloth out of the wool that comes from 
the backs of sheep ; and a long time after that they 
learned how to make cloth out of cotton. 

By this time men had learned that there were so 
many different kinds of things to do, no one man 
could do them all. 

At first every man had done every thing for him- 
self, just as an animal does. He wore no clothes, 
and lived out-doors, and had nothing to do but get 
raw food. Now that people were not satisfied with 
this, and needed a great many more things, the work 
had to be divided. 



HOW THE FIRST PEOPLE LIVED. 41 

Some men made spears and arrows, while others 
found the iron and gold. Some men took care of 
the cattle and flocks, and others made boats or went 
hunting or fishing, or made tents or built rude huts. 

The women spun the wool into cloth, and ground 
the corn between two stones. They also cooked the 
food, and made the dishes and pots out of clay, and 
plaited rushes into baskets. 

Then each man exchanged the things that he had 
made for those which others had made ; that is, the 
man who made arrow-heads made a great many more 
than he wanted for himself, and so he gave away those 
that he did not want in return for meat, and clothes, 
and other things that he needed. 

In the course of time men found out that they 
would save a great deal of time and trouble if they 
could get something that would have the same value 
as the things which they made but would be small 
and could be easily carried. 

So they learned how to use money. This was a 
very great improvement. I will show you why. 
Suppose a man has a great deal more milk than he 
wants, and he needs some wool and eggs. He starts 
off with his milk put up in bottles, or bags made of 
goat-skin, and goes to the man who has eggs to sell. 
After he gets all the eggs that he wants, and leaves 
some milk to pay for it, he goes on, two or three 
miles farther, perhaps, to t}ie man who has wool to 
sell. Now, if the man who had eggs to sell and all 



42 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

the other people near by who wanted milk but had 
no wool, had taken the milk and paid him money, it 
would have been very easy for him to put the money 
into his pocket and get rid of his load of milk. But 
no, he must trudge on and carry it to the man who 
has wool. Perhaps he spills the milk on the way, 
or it is a hot day and it gets sour, or, when he comes 
to the man with the wool he finds that he does not 
want any milk ; then he cannot get his wool after 
all. Now if he had money, the man would very 
gladly have sold his wool. Money will not spoil if 
it is kept, as milk and eggs and other things will ; 
and as it is not very heavy to carry, and does not 
take up much room, it is very convenient to use. 

The money was made of gold or silver, or some- 
thing that was precious and rare. If it had been 
made of stone or any thing that was common, each 
man could have made all the money he wanted for 
himself, and then it would not have been worth any 
thing. 





CHAPTER VI. 

THE WORLD GROWS OLDER AND WISER. 

AFTER many years, people wished to write 
down a record of some of the things that 
had happened. First, they carved pictures in the 
rocks. Afterward they invented a queer kind of writ- 
ing, in which the words were not spelled out, as our 
words are, but were made partly of pictures and signs 
rudely drawn. Sometimes the writing was picked 
out in tablets or rolls of soft, moist clay, which were 
then baked dry until they were as hard as brick. 




CLAY TABLET, ON WHICH IS WRITTEN A STORY OF A KING 
[Found in Babylonia]. 

In the last few years we have learned a great deal 
about these very old writings, for some of them have 
been dug up from the places where they had lain 
buried many feet under ground for thousands of years. 

You know the earth's surface changes a little every 
year. Perhaps you have noticed how short a time 

43 



44 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

it takes to have the pavement in our streets covered 
with mud. If it were not often swept, we soon should 
not know that there was any pavement at all. We 
can easily understand how in the course of thousands 
of years, a great many feet of dust and sand might have 
settled over the ruins of ancient cities and temples. 

In the earliest times people knew nothing about 
the true Grod. I suppose, like the savages who are 

living now, they believed 
in a great many gods. 
They thought that some 
were good and some were 
bad. They supposed that 
the good gods sent them 
game, and fish, and pleasant 
weather, and that the bad 
gods sent thunder, and 
lightning, and sickness. 

There are many people 
on the earth who believe 
this now. They pray to 
sticks and stones, and to 
all sorts of ugly images 
which they have made 
themselves, and call gods. 

IDOL FOUND IN PHOENICIA. Tff e ca ]J theSe people 

"heathen," and the lowest of them are probably 
very much like the first people who lived on the 
earth, who knew nothing about how they came 




THE WORLD GROWS OLDER AND WLSER. 45 

here, or Low they ought to live, or what would 
become of them after their bodies died. 

Men are very different from animals. Horses and 
dogs do not wonder about who made them. But 
even the lowest kind of men begin to think about 
God, and in some way try to pray to Him. They 
feel that there is something greater than they ; some- 
thing that sends great storms and winds, something 
that makes the grass grow, and the sun shine. They 
do not know what to call it, neither do they know 
that this Power is full of love. They only know 
enough to be afraid of it, and so in their blind, help- 
less way they try to pray to it. 

As time went on, and men learned more about the 
earth and about themselves, they learned more about 
God also. By the time people had learned to write, 
they had found out many things about God. 

The race who knew the most about Him were the 
Hebrews, or Jews, as we call them. These people 
belonged to one of the earliest races which we know 
any thing about. 

There were other nations that were very ancient 
also. These were the people who lived in Egypt, 
and in China. 

If you little folks live in the city perhaps you have 
seen some of the queer people from China, with their 
pigtails and white-soled shoes. They belong to a 
very old country indeed. Their great-grandfathers, 
away back, had learned a great deal while ours 



46 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

were still wild people, wearing skins and living in 
caves. 

The people in China and in Egypt knew many 
things that the old Hebrews did not know. They 
knew how to build great temples and tombs and 
pyramids, how to build boats, and to carry on busi- 
ness, and to get rich. But although they had some 
great and wise men, scarcely any of these people had 
an idea of the one, true God. 

The Hebrews lived in a little country and were 
poor ; they did not do so much business nor have so 
much power as the other nations, but they had what 
was much better. 

There were born among them, from time to time, 
great prophets and wise men, who taught new truths, 
— the greatest truths that the world ever knew until 
Jesus came. The Hebrews were such an important 
people that, by and by, I am going to tell you a great 
deal about them. 

But before we stop to do that I want to tell you a 
little about what men have been doing since the time 
of Christ. In another place I shall have a good deal 
to say to you about Jesus, whom we call " The Christ, 
the Son of God." 

His coming into the world was so important, that 
we divide all history into two parts, that which hap- 
pened before he came, and that which has happened 
since. 

A new religion, called Christianity, began to be 



THE WORLD GROWS OLDER AND WLSER. 



47 



preached, although, as time went on, a great many 
teachings that were called by that name had nothing 
to do with what Jesus taught. 

The followers of Jesus taught both the Jews and 
the heathen the new Christian truths. Little by 
little these ideas began to take firm hold of the 
minds of men. In another chapter I will tell you 



■ 




A FAMOUS TOMB IN ASIA MINOR BUILT ABOUT 3OO YEARS BEFORE CHRIST. 

how it all came about, and how at last the people in 
the Western World, that is, in Europe and America, 
all came to be called Christian nations. 



48 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

You must know that by this time — that is, when 
Jesus lived — the world was very different from what 
it was when people were beginning to learn to write 
and when they carved figures on the rocks. 

They now often wrote with pen and ink on parch- 
ment, which was made from the skins of animals. 

The world had been lived in so long that there 
were no longer only miserable little huts and tents. 
There were, in many places, fine marble palaces, 
filled with beautiful statues, more beautiful than any 
you see nowadays. There were also great temples 
and monuments and good roads and bridges. 

A few people were very rich and had a great 
many servants and slaves. These were generals, or 
rulers, or persons who had a large amount of land. 
Most of the people in the world were still poor, and 
could not read, and worked for the rich. 

With the exception of the Jews and the Christians, 
who were a very small number at first, all the people 
in the world were heathen — that is, they did not 
know of the one good God in whom we believe. 

There were a great many kinds of belief. Some 
people believed in many gods, and some in no god 
at all ; some believed that they should live after 
their bodies died, others did not. Many persons 
prayed to the images of their gods in the temples. 

Probably the first large, beautiful buildings that 
were ever built were temples. While the people 
themselves were willing to live in small, cheap 



THE WORLD GROWS OLDER AND WLSER. 



49 



houses, they always wished to have a large, fine 
house in which to worship. 

There are many heathen countries now ; in fact, 
even to-day, although it is nearly nineteen hundred 
years since Jesus was born, most of the world is 
still ignorant of the Father in Heaven whom he 
showed to us. 

We have sent a few teachers out across the ocean 
to these people to try and help them to a better way 
of living and thinking. These are the missionaries 
of whom you have often heard, and they are doing 
the noblest kind of work in the world. 





CHAPTER VII. 

THE NEW WORLD. 

FROM the very earliest times, as men travelled 
from the east toward the setting sun, they 
found races of savages much more ignorant than 
themselves in the new countries to which they 
came. 

They never found a land where people were not 
already living. These men had no record of their 
past, and could not tell how they came there, so I 
suppose we shall never know. 

The men from the east conquered these people and 
then went to work to build up towns and cities, to 
cut down forests and build roads, so that, in the 
course of time, they had as fine buildings and as 
many comforts as the nations in the older lands of 
the east. 

But even the rich, who lived in fine castles and 
ate off silver plates and had plenty of servants, had 
no such common comforts as even the poor have now. 

There were no stoves, and no one burned coal nor 
knew any thing about the great masses of coal that 

50 



V- 




«^ 



A CASTLE IN WESTERN EUROPE. 
51 



52 



GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 



lie buried in the earth. There were no such things 
as matches, or gas, or kerosene oil, or umbrellas, or 
rubber overshoes, or a thousand other things that we 
should not know how to do without. 

While the new cities were rising in the west, in 
France, and Germany, and England, many ancient 




RUINS IN THE EAST. 



cities in the far east were falling to ruins, and were 
becoming buried under the shifting sands. 

Few people besides soldiers and sailors and king's 
messengers ever travelled much, and many persons 
never went out of the little village or valley in which 
they had been born. 



THE NEW WORLD. 53 

There were no steam cars or steamboats, and 
every one had to travel on land very slowly, either 
on foot or on the back of a mule, or in a clumsy cart 
over rough roads. Nowadays we think nothing of 
getting on board the cars and going to the White 
Mountains in summer and to Florida in winter. We 
can travel a thousand miles now as easily as once we 
could have gone fifty. Not until your grandpapa 
was born did this wonderful change in travelling 
come about. 

The ability to go quickly from one place to an- 
other has made a great difference in every thing. 
When it was impossible to get large masses of food 
moved quickly, it was not so easy for people to live 
together in large cities. So in these old times of 
which I speak there were fewer large cities than we 
have now. 

As there were no post-offices or newspapers or 
photographs of distant places, and as it was so hard 
to travel far, you can easily see how most people 
could know very little of the great world about 
them. 

Ignorant persons generally dislike what they do 
not understand, and we find that in old times most 
men rather looked down upon those of other nations 
because they spoke another language and had differ- 
ent customs from their own. 

In our own time, when we have plenty of books, 
papers, lectures, and pictures, we can get better ac- 



54 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

quainted with the people on the other side of the 
world than we could have been with those in a 
neighboring town if we had lived three or four hun- 
dred years ago. Getting better acquainted with 
them makes us more interested in them, and this is 
one great reason why, in our time, there is a much kind- 
lier feeling between different nations than their used 
to be. Though when we read of the different wars 
which are always going on somewhere in the world, 
we can see that we are very, very far yet from loving 
our neighbors as ourselves. 

I want to tell you of two very wonderful things 
which greatly helped to set people to thinking, and 
made a marvellous change in the history of the 
whole world. 

It had generally been supposed, you know, that 
the earth was flat ; but at last men came to the con- 
clusion that it must be round, and about four hun- 
dred years ago — that is, about fifteen hundred years 
after the time of Christ, a brave man named 
Christopher Columbus, who believed this, and who 
was not afraid of coming to the end of the world 
and falling off, started out from the Old World 
to sail across the great Atlantic Ocean, feeling sure 
that he would find land on the other side. He sailed 
and sailed westward, over the unknown sea. On 
and on he went, days and weeks and months, and 
when all the sailors with him in his three little 
ships thought they were lost and should never see 



THE NEW WORLD. 



55 



land again, brave Columbus still hoped that he 
should come to land, and would not turn back. 

At last, when the sailors were so angry that they 
were ready to throw him overboard, he saw an 




LANDING OF COLUMBUS, I492. 



island near the land of the New World, or America, 
as we now call it. Only Indians lived there, who had 
never seen a white man before. 

When people in Europe heard about this you may 



$6 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

be sure that they were greatly surprised. In the 
next two hundred years a great many other people 
came, but they did not bring their families, and did 
not mean to stay. They came because they thought 
they could find gold, and would get rich. Most of 
them were disappointed. But though they did 
not get much gold they found a great many other 
things, and learned a great deal, so that it made it 
easier for the other people who came after them, and 
brought their families and lived here. 

By the time Columbus came to America books 
had begun to be printed. This invention of printing 
was one of the most important things that ever hap- 
pened after people learned how to make fire. 

Now, you see, whenever a man learned some new 
and important thing, he could print it in a book, and 
then every one would learn about it. This saved a 
great deal of time. Each man who could read, 
could learn what other people had seen, and heard, 
and thought of, so he would not have to spend his 
time in going to see, or hear, or think it out for him- 
self. 

If you stop to think a minute you will see how the 
power to print, made books a great deal cheaper. 
Now that they did not have to be written out 
slowly by hand, but could be printed quickly by 
a machine, even the poor people began to have books. 

Many poor boys had just as good minds as rich 
boys had, but before this it was hardly possible for 



THE NEW WORLD. 



$7 



theni to learn much. Now, however, since they 
could have books, they studied the Bible and Latin 
books, and books of poetry, and they read stories 
about the new country across the sea. 

A»i!dl»cSmsl)toftbe 

fetoantie. 




AN EXAMPLE OF THE STYLE OF LETTERS AND PICTURES IN THE BOOKS 
WHICH WERE FIRST PRINTED IN ENGLAND. 

There were no children's story-books in those 
days, and no St Nicholas or Youth's Companion 
with beautiful pictures. Children had rather a hard 
time then, I am afraid. Not half as much was done 



58 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

for them as is done now. There were no such toy- 
shops and candy-shops as we have ; no school where 
the children learned drawing and music, and where 
the boys and girls studied together, and had smooth, 
polished desks, with bright pictures on the wall, and 
nice maps and blackboards and slates. 

In those times people did not think it worth while 
to teach girls very much, so they often did not learn 
any thing but reading and writing. At home they 
learned many things that little girls now do not know 
much about ; all kinds of sewing, and embroidery, 
and spinning, and weaving, and housework. 

People had come to respect women more than they 
used to, but still they did not think that a woman 
ought to know as much as a man, and there were 
many unjust laws about women which I am glad to 
say, in most places, have nearly passed away. 

Altogether, with the exception of the beautiful 
churches and pictures, there was very little in the 
world of Europe four hundred years ago, which we 
should be glad to have to-day. When you are older 
and read about the cruelty and ignorance of those 
old times, when people could neither read nor travel 
much, you will be very glad that you were not born 
until the nineteenth century, and that you were born 
in America. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

THE STORY OF OUR PEOPLE. 

ABOUT two hundred and fifty years ago, a few 
brave men, who had been driven away from 
their home in England on account of their religion, 
decided that they would bring their families over the 
great Atlantic Ocean to America. They meant to 
make a home for themselves in this strange New 
World, where they could believe just what they 
thought was right, and would have no one to interfere 
with them. It was a very hard thing for them to 
do, and I am sure you will think so when I tell you 
what they did. 

They set sail in summer in a little ship called the 
Mayflower, and did not land until winter. Once I 
went in a great steamship across the same ocean, 
and I saw land in about seven days. Even that 
seemed a long time to be out on the water, but 
just think what it must have been to those poor Pil- 
grims who were on the ocean over ninety days ! 
When I was on the steamship I had good food and 
a good bed, and passed a very comfortable time. I 

59 



60 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

knew, besides, that when I got to the other side of 
the ocean I should see friends, and that made me 
happy. But these Pilgrims were leaving their dear 
friends and coming to a wild, strange country where 
savages lived, and I know their hearts must have 
ached when they thought of the dear ones they had 
left behind, and of the hard times that they knew 
awaited them in the New World. 

They saw land at last, and after some time landed 
on a rock which I suppose is the most famous spot 
in our whole country. 

They started a little town and called it " Plymouth," 
and the rock is called u Plymouth Rock." I 
hope some day you may all stand beside it as I have 
done, for it is a place which should be very dear to 
all American boys and girls. 

Here on the hill, beside the sea, they built their 
first little log house. I will not stop now to tell you 
the long, sad story of that first cold, dreary winter ; 
about the little baby, Peregrine, who was born ; how 
half their number died, and yet how every one re- 
fused to go back in the Mayflower to their dear 
home and friends. 

Ah ! they were a brave, noble people ! No other 
nation was ever begun as ours was. Other people 
have gone to new countries to get more land, to find 
gold, to become rich. But these people came that 
they might serve God. To be sure they were very 
strict and believed a good many things which we do 



THE STORY OF OUR PEOPLE. 6[ 

not believe now, but they were much wiser and 
better than the other people of their time. They 
were poor and unknown then. The kings and queens 
and great people of the earth cared very little about 
them. But to-day they are the ones of whom we are 
proud, and I think all the boys and girls who come 
to know about them will feel better pleased to be 
able to find the names of AVilliam Bradford, or John 
Carver, among their great-grandfathers, than the name 
of any king. 

A great many different kinds of people have come 
over the sea from the Old World since then. Some 
have come because in a new country they could make 
more money than at home. Others have come be- 
cause in this country there are no kings and queens, 
and every man can vote ; for this is a country where 
the people themselves make the laws. Some have 
come for one reason, some for another, but there have 
never come any people half so important as those 
brave Pilgrims who came first. By their wise plans 
and their hard work they prepared the way for 
making this nation in which we live the happiest 
and best nation in the world. 

A few years later, some other people who were 
very much like the first Pilgrims, came over to 
America and settled in Boston. One of the first 
things they did was to start a school for boys. This 
school is now the Boys' Latin School, and is the old- 
est school in America. Perhaps some of the boys 



62 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

who read this will go to it some day. It is a great 
and famous school now. 

Very likely yon think there was nothing remark- 
able in starting a school and in having free schools 
where every boy could go. We see so many jmblic 
schools everywhere that we do not often think what 
a wonderful thing it is to have schools, and we for- 
get that people did not always have them. 

Our country was the first in the world to give 
every boy a chance to go to school even when he 
could not pay for it. 

I have already said that for thousands of years 
people did not think that women were of so much 
consequence as men ; so, when the first school was 
started, they did not think of letting the little girls 
go to it. It was a long time before there were any 
free schools for girls, and it was not until the days 
when your mamma was a little girl that a young 
woman had just exactly as good a chance to study 
as a young man has. 

It is now over two hundred and fifty years since 
the English people began coming to this country. 
During this time there have been more inventions 
than were made in all the thousands of years since 
men first used stone hatchets and Avore skins for 
clothing. 

One great reason for this was that the people had 
printed books, and that, in this country at least, 
almost every one learned to read. 



THE STORY OF OUR PEOPLE. 6$ 

In old times cloth was made by the spinning- 
wheels and looms which people had in their own 
houses. After machinery was invented to do this, 
great factories were built where the cloth was 
made. As it could be made by machinery much 
quicker than by the little hand-looms, every one 
could afford to have more of it and to dress better. 

I said, you remember, that when your grandpapa 
was a little boy, people could travel on the land no 
faster than they travelled thousands of years ago ; 
that is, they went on horseback during all those years. 
Now, since steam-engines were invented, and railroad 
tracks laid down, a man could easily travel two or 
three hundred miles a day. 

Telegraphs were invented, too, and after a while 
people were able to send messages, not only on land, 
but also under the ocean clear over to Europe. 

Telegraphs, railroads, and photographs have made 
a wonderful difference in the world. This morning, 
when your papa takes up his newspaper, he can learn 
of all the important things which have happened 
all over the world during yesterday and last night. 
This would have seemed like a miracle if it had hap- 
pened in ancient times. 

One great result of all this is, that people travel a 
thousand times as much as they used to. Those 
who do not travel learn a great deal about distant 
countries by means of photographs. So we get ac- 
quainted with all the different kinds of people on 
the earth. 



64 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

We learn about those who live away up north, 
where they have a night that is six months long. 
And we learn about the black people who live in 
the hot countries where there are lions and ele- 
phants. 

Those who live out on the prairies, and have never 
seen any mountains, learn about them by means of 
pictures, and the people who live among the moun- 
tains learn about the sea ; so each one has a chance 
to become acquainted with the whole world. 

When we hear that a strange people, speaking a 
different language from ours, and away off on the 
other side of the world, are suffering from hunger, 
we feel sorry for them, and send them food and 
money if we can. Before steamships were built we 
could not have done this. It might have taken 
months for us to hear that the crops had failed, and 
that they had no food, and then several more months 
before we could have gathered the money or food 
and sent it to them. 

I expect that in the time to come, when people of 
different countries have learned more about each 
other, they will care more for each other, and then 
there will not be so many wars. 

You remember I told you that the first men used 
to quarrel and fight a great deal, the strong ones 
killing the weaker. Now we have learned that it is 
wrong for us to punish or hurt any one who injures 
us, for we have made laws to protect us, and the 



THE STORY OF OUR PEOPLE. 65 

State must punish a man who commits a crime. We 
have policemen to arrest bad men, and courts in 
which to try them, and prisons in which to put them. 

Society, that is, all the men taken together, choose 
a few men among themselves to make the laws, and 
then we are all bound to obey them. In some 
places the women as well as the men help choose 
those who shall make the laws. I think very likely 
the little girls w T ho read this will some day join with 
their brothers in choosing the men who shall make 
the laws here in our own State. Then I hope when 
all the people have a hand in making them, the laws 
will be better than they are now. 

I hope also that the time will sometime come when 
people will learn the law of love which God has 
taught us. Then, w r hen countries quarrel with each 
other, instead of fighting, and having cruel, wicked 
wars, they will try to settle their disputes in some 
other way. I am sure that this good time is coming, 
and each one of us can help a little in bringing it 
sooner, by being gentle, and patient, and trying to 
be " blessed peacemakers." 

But sometimes, when I see the terrible and wicked 
things which men have done, even in this happy 
America, and in this age, I am afraid that the good 
time for which I hope will be long in coming. 

Have you ever heard of that terrible thing called 
" slavery " ? If you had lived when your papa was 
young you would have heard a great deal about it. 



66 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Slavery began in very early times, no one knows 
how long ago. Sometimes the slaves were black, 
sometimes they were as white as yon are. Many 
times they were the wives and children of soldiers 
killed in battle. Men were very crnel in those old 
times, and when they went to iight in their enemies' 
country they not only killed the men, but killed the 
innocent women and children, or else took them away 
and made slaves of them. 

Even after people had learned to be Christians, 
many of them thought it was not wrong to have 
slaves. In some parts of our country there were 
slaves almost from the first. These slaves were all 
black people, and sons inherited them from their 
fathers just like any other property. The house-ser- 
vants and nurses, or " mammies," as they were called, 
were often very fond of their master's children, who 
in return often treated them very kindly and took 
good care of them when they grew old and helpless. 

The best that could be said about slavery was that 
many of the slave-holders took great care of the slaves 
who had grown up on their estates, treating them often 
like members of one great family of which the master 
was the head, and letting them learn more than they 
would have known if they had remained in the savage 
tribes in Africa from which the first slaves were stolen. 

But men owned slaves just as they did horses. 
Sometimes a slave was bought for a thousand dollars, 
or just about as much as one would pay for a fine horse ; 



THE STORY OF OUR PEOPLE. 6 J 

and while some masters were kind to their slaves, others 
were cruel, and would sometimes whip them almost 
to death. No one was allowed to teach them how to 
read. They were kept, like animals, to do work ; and 
their masters did not want them to know much. 

The worst thing about it all was that even if a mas- 
ter were kind, he sometimes needed money, and would 
sell a slave to get it. Then the poor man would 
have to leave his wife and children, to go off with his 
new master, and perhaps never see them again. 

I could tell you stories about these poor black 
people, and how cruelly they were treated, which 
would make you cry, for I hope you all have tender 
hearts, and would not like to see a dog suffer, and 
much less a poor, little, black child. Some day you 
must get your papa to tell you the story of " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin." It is one of the best stories I ever read, 
and is about a slave who was sold away from his family. 

You know I told you in the first part of this book 
how people kept traA^elling from the east, westward. 
Ever since the Pilgrims came across the Atlantic 
Ocean to America, people kept travelling westward. 
After a while this great country, called the United 
States, had railroads running all over it, and white 
paople living in all parts of it. There always were 
a few Indians besides, but they lived on the prairies 
by themselves, and did not have much to do with 
the white people ; but the black people increased 
in numbers greatly. Nearly all of them were slaves, 



68 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

and lived down South, and worked on farms. 'I'Lt? 
people at the South said they thought it was right 
to have slaves, but many at the North thought it was 
very wrong. After a while they began to quarrel 
about it, and at last, when the Southern people had 
made up their minds to break away from us and have a 
separate government of their own, the people at the 
North felt that it was all wrong and must be stopped. 

Then there was a terrible war between the North 
and the South, which lasted four years. It was one of 
the most important wars that ever was fought. All 
this happpened when your papa was a little boy or a 
young man, and you must ask him to tell you about it. 

During the war our President, good Abraham 
Lincoln, set the slaves free ! At the end of the war 
we were once more a united nation, and, thank God ! 
a free people, where every man, except the few In- 
dians, can vote ; that is, he can choose the men who 
are to make the laws and the men who are to see that 
they are carried out. I hope sometime we shall learn 
to treat these Indians better, and shall give to all of 
them schools, such as have already been given to a 
few tribes, so that they can learn to speak English, 
and to live in houses instead of tents, and to work 
and earn their living as we do. It is true we never 
made slaves of them, as we did of the black people, 
but we have treated them in a very mean, selfish way, 
and have never, as a nation, kept the promises we 
made to them. 




CHAPTER IX. 



THE PRESENT TIME. 



WE live now in what I think is the very best 
country, and the very best time that there 
ever was in the whole world. Sometimes people 
talk about the " good old times " ; but no one who 
knows about it believes that there ever was a time 
when the world was better, or wiser, or happier than 
it is now. 

There are more persons now who can dress com- 
fortably and live decently than ever before. And, 
what is of a great deal more importance, there never 
was a time when so many read, or studied, or trav- 
elled so much, or were so kind and helpful as they 
are now. 

We have free hospitals for sick people and asy- 
lums for those who are deaf, or blind, or insane. 
Little, blind children are taught to read with their 
fingers, from raised letters, and deaf boys and girls 
are taught to speak with their lips. 

I suppose you have all heard of Temperance socie- 
ties, and the " Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 

69 



yo GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

to Animals." I really do not know where to stop 
when I begin to think of all the kind things that are 
done all over the world for the poor and sick and 
helpless. 

Of course there were many kind-hearted persons in 
old times, but as I said before, it was impossible for 
them to learn of all who needed their help before 
there were books and newspapers ; and it was very 
difficult to send help before there were railroads and 
steamships. Then, when people were more ignorant, 
they were more cruel. Only one hundred years ago 
such cruel things were done as you could hardly be- 
lieve now. People were put into prison for debt, 
and in some places were hanged for shooting a deer 
on their neighbor's land. 

The doctors knew very little about healing the sick, 
and many persons, two hundred years ago, who were 
insane, or had fits, were thought to have evil spirits 
in them, or were supposed to be witches. Besides, 
people were used to seeing a great deal of suffering, 
and thought nothing of treating servants and pris- 
oners, and even little children, in a very harsh way. 
Sometimes poor little children worked down under- 
ground in the deep, black coal mines, where they 
could hardly ever come up and see the blessed sun- 
shine. They never went to school, and they lived a 
terrible life. 

Less than a hundred years ago, most of the pris- 
ons were dreadful places. The prisoners were idle 



THE PRESENT TIME. J I 

and dirty, and often did not have enough to eat. 
Now, in most places, there is a great improvement. 
The prisoners are kept clean, and have good food, 
and are taught some useful trade. The laws are not 
so severe as they used to be, and good care is taken 
that no innocent person shall be punished, as often 
used to happen. In fact, the trouble is now that the 
guilty ones often go without the punishment which 
they deserve. 

We must not think, because the time we live in is 
so much better than the old times, that we can feel 
at all contented and think there is nothing very im- 
portant left for us to do to make the world better. 
There are a great many terrible things in the world 
still. There is a great deal of selfishness, and wicked- 
ness, and cruelty even in our own happy country. 
The really good Christian people, who care for others 
as much as for themselves, are very few indeed. 

Many men are in such a hurry to get rich that 
they never stop to think what Jesus said about doing 
to others as we would have them do to us. They 
never stop to think that they are children of God, 
and that He has told us we can never be really 
happy except by being unselfish and thinking of 
others. 

And while I am speaking of this dear land, 
America, in which we all live, I want to stop right 
here and preach a little bit of a sermon to the little 
boys and girls who, in a few years, are going to be 



72 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

men and women and do the sober work of the 
world. 

I want you to have all the fun and frolic you can, 
and I do not want to worry you with thoughts that 
will make you too sober. But I think if little folks 
never have any quiet, serious thoughts, they are apt 
to be rather foolish and selfish. And you know that 
people are very likely to become, when they are 
grown, just what they began to be as children. 

We, who have had so much done for us to make 
us what we are, should begin to think how we, in 
our turn, can do something for other people. 

As I have already said, we live in the most 
wonderful time in the history of the world. Every 
man now has to know and think of many things of 
which his father knew nothing. Every man's life 
now depends more on other people than it used to. 

Over a hundred years ago, when George Washing- 
ton was a boy, a man and his wife could raise their 
own food and make the cloth for their clothes them- 
selves out of the wool from their own sheep. But 
almost no one does that now. People live in cities 
a great deal more than they used to, and so cannot 
raise their own food, and most of the cloth is made 
now by machinery in factories. 

Each man learns to do one thing; perhaps he 
makes shoes or matches. He makes not only for 
himself, but for other people, and others do every 
thing for him. They write books, and paint pic- 



THE PRESENT TIME. 73 

tures, and build houses, and dig potatoes for him, 
and do a thousand other things. Each man has to 
depend for almost every thing he wants on other 
men. 

Each man finds, if he does not work and plan to 
please other people, that he can earn no rnoney, and 
so cannot buy the things which he cannot make him- 
self. So the whole world is being bound closer to- 
gether. We must know and think more about 
others all over the world than ever before ; this is 
true even if we are selfish, and care only about 
making money. 

It is much more true if we think of every one in 
all the world as belonging to one great family, and 
all brothers, children of " Our Father." This seems 
a very simple, common thing to say. But it is a 
great truth, and one of the very greatest thoughts 
that I can give you. It is a thought that goes down 
deeper than any thing you can think or fully under- 
stand even when you are grown up. 

When we look beyond Christian lands, which 
really are, even now, only a small part of the world, 
we find other countries a great deal larger than ours 
and having a great many more people in them, where 
are all the cruelty, and wickedness, and ignorance 
now, which I have been telling you, used to be in 
our Christian countries in old times. 

There are still many lands in the world now where 
women are treated like slaves and have no rights ; 



74 



GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 



where the little girls are never taught any thing, and 
where many of the laws are cruel and wrong. There 
are other countries still where there are no laws, and 
where the people still live almost like the first men 
and women of whom I told you. They are almost 
naked, they live in little huts, and are dirty, ignorant 
people who hardly know the difference between 
right and wrong. All these need to be taught, and 
helped, and lifted up at least to where w T e are, and 
every one of us ought to help do a little towards 
this. We can help a great deal in ever so many 
ways. I wonder if you can find out what these 
ways are ; if not, I will tell you by and by. 




CHAPTER X. 

A TIME-TABLE OF THE CENTURIES. 

I HAVE told you about so many different things 
in these talks which we have had that I am 
afraid you will find it hard to remember them. 
Suppose you try to think of your mind as a closet 
that has a great many hooks in it on which you can 
hang things. 

The things I have been telling you in a few, 
simple words about our country, and the history of 
people on this earth, and about the way the earth 
was made, are the hooks. I hope you will screw 
these hooks in hard so that they will not come out. 
Now you will always be learning a great many more 
new facts about the earth and the people on it, and 
as you learn each new thing you must hang it on the 
hook where it belongs, and then you will always 
know just where to go and find it. 

Let us look back a minute now over what we 
were talking about. We began bv telling how God 
created every thing, and always was creating, and 
always will create. We told about how slowly He 

75 



j6 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE TLLLNKERS. 

worked in making tlie worlds, now our earth was 
one of the smallest things made, and how it took 
millions of years to form it into its present shape. 
We saw how it took countless years for it to become 
ready for people to live on. We learned about the 
first people who ever lived, how they wore skins of 
animals for clothing, and had no tools nor machines. 
We have seen how, little by little, very slowly, they 
made themselves more comfortable and unlike ani- 
mals, who are always satisfied with being animals 
and never wish to improve. These people went 
on, never satisfied, and always learning more and 
more. 

I think if we wanted to tell the greatest difference 
between animals and men, it would not be by saying 
that animals have four legs and a tail, and men have 
two legs and no tail. It would not be by showing 
the difference between their bodies. I should say 
perhaps the greatest difference between men and 
animals was shown by men having language, and 
animals having none. 

To be sure dogs bark, and cats mew, and other 
animals make noises, but this is not language at all ; 
they do not all agree in making a particular kind of 
noise stand for a particular thing, as men do when 
they use a word. Language is one of the most won- 
derful things in the world, whether it is a deaf-and- 
dumb language of signs, a written, or a spoken lan- 
guage. Another thing which shows the immense 




A. D. 1500 
A. D. 1700 



CHART OF THE AGES. 

s, matches, sewing-machines, steamboats, photographs, telephones, ether, steel ] 
india-rubbers, reaping and mowing and threshing machines. 



I I 

o .— 
o a. 



O M 
O .5 



ui ,c 



e - 2 



A TIME-TABLE OF THE CENTURIES. 7J 

difference between men and animals is that men are 
never satisfied. They always want to learn more, to 
travel and enjoy more, to get more money, and to 
have more power. But animals never look far ahead 
or plan as men do, and never want to improve. 

Now I am going to try on another page to give 
you a little idea of the length of time since people 
began to make a record of what they did. 

The upper half of the page, which is dark and 
blurred, represents the last part of those countless 
years which came before the time when men began 
to make records on stone or on clay tablets. The 
lower half represents the years that have passed 
since then. It is divided into rows, having one hun- 
dred divisions in each row. Each division stands 
for a year, and each row for a century. 

The bottom row has only eighty-eight divisions, 
as there have been only eighty-eight years in this 
century. 

Two heavy black lines mark the century in which 
Christ was born. It is called the first century of the 
Christian era. 

The lower black lines mark the hundred years in 
which printing was invented, Columbus discovered 
America, and the great reformer, Luther, lived, of 
whom I will tell you by and by. 

At the bottom row I have written a few of the 
many things which have been invented, or discovered, 
or come into use in this century. 



78 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

If you are nine years old, try and think back 
more than two hundred times as long as you have 
lived, and that will take you back to the time of 
Christ. I know it is very hard for you little folks 
to understand how long one hundred years is, and of 
course it is a great deal harder for you to think how 
long one thousand years is, though perhaps you know 
how to write it on your slates. So I will tell you 
another way which will help you to imagine how 
long a time has passed since people began to learn to 
write. 

We do not know exactly when it was, but I sup- 
pose it was about forty-five hundred years ago, or, as 
we generally say, four thousand five hundred years. 
Now if you should count all the stars in the sky, — 
the bright ones, and the far-away ones that look so 
faint we can hardly see them, you would find that 
there were not so many stars as there are years since 
that early time when men first made the wonderful 
discovery that they could write down their thoughts. 




CHAPTER XI. 

WHAT IS GOD? 

NOW we are going to begin to think about the 
greatest thought in the whole world. 

We have thought a little about the earth and the 
stars, and about plants and animals and human 
beings. It is very easy to think about these, for we 
can see them. 

But now we are going to think about One whom 
we can neither see, nor hear, nor touch, and that is 
the hardest thing that any one can do. 

When we speak about Him and say " He " instead 
of saying " She " or " It," we must not think it is 
because God is a man, or is like a man. It would 
be just as true to call God our "Mother in heaven " 
as our " Father in heaven." 

In old times people used to think God was much 
the same as a large, strong man. Even when they 
had learned better than that, whenever they wanted 
to paint Him in a picture, they painted Him like an 
old man with a white beard, for they did not know- 
any other way to express their idea of Him. 

79 



80 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Many ignorant persons still think of Him as a 
great man living somewhere up in the sky, and look- 
ing down upon us with eyes very much like our 
own. 

It is quite natural that people should have thought 
this in the old times when they knew very little, and 
supposed the world was flat, and thought that the 
stars were tiny little lights hung up in the sky to 
give us light on a dark night. 

No one has ever seen God with his real eyes, be- 
cause God has no body as a man has. In a certain 
sense we might say His body is the whole universe. 
He lives in every thing, in the stars and sun and 
moon, in you and me, in every flower that grows, in 
the mountains and the sea. God is everywhere all 
the time. Men must travel about from one place to 
another ; they can be in only one place at a time. 
God never moves. He is already in every place. 

When I say God lives in the trees and mountains 
and every thing that is, I think you can understand 
how it is that when we speak of God " seeing " and 
" hearing," it is in a very different way from what 
we hear and see. We see with eyes and hear with 
ears. God has no eyes nor ears, for he has no body, 
yet He can see and hear every thing, and is a real 
Person. The day and night are both alike to Him. 
We often find the different writers of the Bible 
saying " God spake and said," and sometimes they 
speak of His "voice." They tell of His "riding 



WHAT IS GOD? 8 1 

on the clouds," and call the earth His " footstool." 
They write about His " laughing," and of His " hold- 
ing the earth in the hollow of His hand." 

Now children do not understand this curious way 
of talking in poetry or pictures, and they often make 
the mistake of taking it all as if it were exactly so. 
In another chapter I will explain to you what I 
mean by calling this ,l poetry." When we find any 
writer saying that God has spoken to him, we must 
always understand that this voice was a very differ- 
ent kind from a man's voice. In fact it was not a 
spoken voice at all. It was simply that God put 
certain thoughts into the mind of the writer. When 
we read about His holding the earth in the hollow 
of His hand," we must remember that God has no 
real hand, and that this was just a grand, strong way 
of showing people how great and wonderful He is, 
and telling of His constant support. 

Let us see now how many things we know about 
this wonderful Spirit who made us and the rest of 
the world, and who lives in us all, and makes the 
world the body in which His spirit dwells just as 
our spirit dwells in our body. 

First of all, He has power to do every thing that 
He wishes to. We know, too, that although He has 
no eyes, nor ears like ours, He sees and hears and 
knows every thing. You see it must be so, for He 
is in every thing, and is the power in every thing. 

Nothing could live a minute, even the mountains, 



82 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE TIL INKERS. 

and sun, and stars would at once go out, just as the 
name of a candle goes out when you blow on it, if 
God was not in them and did not all the time keep 
them in their places. 

Besides this we know He is always the same. 
He never changes His mind nor forgets as we do. 
He sees into the future and knows what will happen, 
so it is just as real to Him as the present time. 

He cannot do any thing wrong. He is full of 
love. He understands all about us, and knows us 
better than we know ourselves. If other people 
make mistakes about us and misunderstand us, He 
never does. 

Sometimes grown people forget how they used to 
feel when they were little folks, and so they do not 
understand children. But the dear Father is our 
best friend. He always understands us, and the 
only thing He asks of us is to love Him and to grow 
like Him. 





CHAPTEK XII. 

WHAT ARE WE? 

I SAID the hardest thing in the world to do was 
to think of God, whom we cannot see, nor hear, 
nor touch. Perhaps the next hardest thing to do is 
to get a true idea of ourselves and each other. 
We are made in God's image. That is, our spirits 
are, in a small way, like His spirit. So really, when 
you come to think of it, you will see that we do not 
see nor touch each other ; we only touch each other's 
bodies, for spirit cannot be seen. 

The bodies in which our spirits live are not our 
real selves, but we are the power that is in them and 
makes them move. Your hand is no more really a 
part of you than a mountain is a part of God. 

We say that God is in the mountain and all other 
things, just as we say that we are in our bodies. 

Of course in our common, e very-day way of speak- 
ing we do not say this ; we speak of seeing a little 
girl when we see her feet skipping along the sidewalk 
and her arms are thrown around our neck and she 
talks to us, and it is well enough to say so, only we 

83 



84 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

must be sure to remember that the real little girl is 
something which lies behind the eyes and lips. 

She would be just as truly my little friend if her 
hands and feet were cut off and the bright eyes grew 
blind and she could not see me. 

The lower animals, like dogs and horses, are not 
made in the image of God as we are. They cannot 
grow like Him for they know nothing about Him. 
We do not see any reason to believe that horses, and 
birds, and fish, and other such creatures have of 
themselves learned any more now than they knew 
thousands of years ago. Sometimes we can teach a 
pet animal a few tricks by petting or whipping him, 
but that is all. On the other hand, men and women 
are much wiser now than they used to be. We 
have, as I have said, that wonderful thing called 
language, and each one who learns something can tell 
it to some one else, and in that way all can learn what 
each one knows. 

Perhaps you never thought before that language 
was such a wonderful thing, but just see. Suppose 
George knows how to play checkers, and Edith 
knows how to make caramels, and Ida knows how to 
make paper dolls. Then each by talking and ex- 
plaining teaches the others the one thing he or she 
knows. So each knows three things instead of one. 

It is a wonderful thing to think of, that no matter 
how many thoughts we give to others we have just 
as many as we had before. If Amy has two dolls 



WHAT ARE WE? 85 

and gives Ida one, of course she has only one left. 
But if Amy knows two things and teaches Ida one 
of them, although Ida has gained something, Amy 
has lost nothing, and each knows it better for having 
taught it. 

In regard to our bodies and to the things which we 
see, eat, smell, hear, or wear, we are very much like 
the lower animals. But in regard to the things that 
belong to our spirits, we are not like them, we are like 
God, for we are creatures who have reason and the 
power to make ourselves what we want to be. 

When we are cold and hungry we suffer in our 
bodies just as horses and dogs do, and when our 
bodies die and we leave them, they will decay in the 
ground and turn to dust, and after a while nothing 
will be left of them, but as we are spirits, made like 
God, who can never die, so we too can never die. 

If we know of some dear little friend who has 
died, and we have seen the little body put into the 
ground, we must remember always that it is only the 
body which is there, — only the little home where our 
friend lived for a few years, and now, like a worn- 
out dress, it is laid aside. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

HEAVEN AND HELL. 

PERHAPS there are no two words having to do 
with the great, unseen world which lies beyond 
the reach of our senses, that have been so misunder- 
stood as the two words at the head of this chapter. 

Ever since we can remember we have heard about 
heaven. If we had lived some years ago we should 
have heard a great deal about hell also, but now- 
adays we hear very little about it, partly because 
many people do not believe in it, but chiefly because 
those who do believe in it like to try and forget 
whatever they do not want to believe. 

We have heard many Sunday-school songs about 
" Beautiful gates of pearly white," and we have sung 
about angels playing on golden harps and walking 
beside crystal fountains. These pretty songs have 
no doubt helped to fix in our minds the idea that 
heaven is a large, beautiful city, or at least some 
kind of a real place, high above the earth among the 
stars, where all good people go after they die. Per- 
haps we have seen pictures of beautiful, tall angels, 

86 



HEAVEN AND HELL. 8? 

with long, white wings, and we think that some day, 
if we are only good enough, we shall look like them, 
and be able to fly about as the birds do. 

This is what I used to think when I was a little 
girl, and just what you would naturally think from 
seeing pictures and hearing songs about heaven. 

It is a very pretty, pleasant thought, and the only 
trouble with it is, that there is not the least reason 
for supposing it is true. 

I do not mean that the poets and painters have 
tried to deceive us ; they simply tried, as best they 
could, to give us an idea that heaven means some- 
thing very glorious and beautiful. 

Now the dearest and best things, those which are 
the most real and lasting, are not things which can 
be painted or seen with our eyes. 

If heaven were simply a very beautiful place, that 
in itself could not make us happy. The true heaven 
is the highest kind of joy, and it must be in our- 
selves ; the place where we are has very little to do 
with it. 

Heaven is not far away among the stars ; it is not 
a place at all. 

There can be heaven in our hearts before we die, 
just as well as afterwards. 

Supposing you should play with matches when 
you had been told never to light them, and should 
set the house on fire, and all your pretty home 
should soon become a mass of black ruins, owing to 



88 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

your doing wrong. Suppose in the fright and hurry 
your papa should have fallen and been hurt and 
your mamma made ill. 

If you were taken into the house of the richest 
man in town, and given all the candy and toys you 
wanted, and allowed to do just as you pleased, do 
you think this would make you happy ? I do not 
believe the finest things in the world could keep you 
from crying. 

Suppose, on the other hand, you were walking by 
a railroad track and you saw that a large stone had 
fallen right in the way of the train which was com- 
ing around a curve in a few minutes. There was no 
time to call for help, and you began yourself to pull 
and push with all your strength, and just at the last 
minute, as the train thundered along, you rolled it off 
and fell with bleeding hands and aching body. Do 
you think that all the fun you ever had on the 
Fourth of July or Christmas, all the nicest things in 
the world that you could think of, would ever give 
you the real happiness that you would have as you 
lay there and thought, " There were hundreds of 
people on that train, and I saved their lives ? " 

Real happiness or misery, you see, has very little 
to do with what is outside of us. 

There are very few poems or pictures nowadays 
that tell us about hell. From some sentences in the 
Bible that were not well understood, for many hun- 
dreds of years it was thought that hell was a place 



HEA VEN AND HELL. 89 

where wicked people go when they die, and where, 
during all the years to come, they were to be burned 
in dreadful fires and have no chance to be good and 
love God even if they wanted to. 

Many people have come to disbelieve in this kind 
of hell, although they still believe in the old idea of 
heaven as a particular place somewhere, away off up 
in the sky. Heaven is not a place, neither is hell a 
place, but yet they are very real things, and heaven 
is just as beautiful as can possibly be imagined, and 
hell is as terrible as it would be if it were a furnace 
of scorching flames. 

Hell is the feeling which people have in their 
hearts when they are entirely selfish and hate what 
is good. 

God can never put heaven into any one of us, nor 
keep hell out of any one of us, unless we choose to 
let Him. God can do almost every thing, but there 
is one thing He cannot do : He cannot make us good 
unless we choose to be, and He cannot make us 
happy unless we love what is good. 

On the other hand, if a man went on millions of 
years doing wrong, and then should finally come to 
see that, after all, he was only cheating himself and 
had no real happiness, and had made a complete 
failure of himself, and should be really sorry and try 
to begin a new life, God would love him and help 
him, for it is never too late for Him to forgive any 
one if he is beginning to love Him. 



90 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

This is a great If, however ; for when a child has 
begun by being selfish and untruthful, and grown 
up to be a mean, dishonest man, no one can tell 
whether when he leaves his body, or dies, as we say, 
he will change his mind and want to become any 
thing different from what he has always been. 

Have you ever heard of the little blind fishes who 
live in the rivers of dark caves ? Once they had 
eyes as good as those of other fishes ; but after liv- 
ing a long time where there was no light, they be- 
came so blind they could not see when at last they 
swam out into the sunlight. 

I do not know, but it may be that any one who 
has gone on many years thinking only of what he 
himself wants, and caring nothing about other peo- 
ple, nor loving what is true and noble, may some 
time get so blind that he really cannot see the beauty 
and loveliness of the best things, but may always go 
on shrinking smaller and smaller in his soul, until he 
is almost like an animal. This is what we mean 
when we talk of " hell." 

When you read that heaven and hell are not 
places, you must not imagine that we shall not live 
in some place, but shall float around in the sky as 
the clouds do. No, indeed. We shall be in some 
place, of course, but the place will have little to do 
with our being in heaven or in hell. We know very 
little about what we shall do after we die, and we 
need not waste any time in guessing and wondering 
about how we shall look or where we shall be. 



HEAVEN AND HELL. 9 1 

The only important question is as to what we 
shall be and what we shall do. Of one thing I am 
certain: if we love God, we shall not be idle and 
useless, but shall have a great many delightful things 
to do and learn. 

Whether all the good people will be together, and 
all the bad ones together, I do not know, but I hope 
not. I cannot help thinking that perhaps those who 
have come to have heaven in their hearts will be al- 
lowed to teach and help those who have not yet 
learned to love our Heavenly Father. 

I think, if we have not yet found it out, we shall 
come to see by and by that the most blessed thing 
which the dear God could let us do, would be to try 
to lead more people to love Him. 

Although these are great thoughts, on which the 
wisest men have thought deeply, I believe Little 
Thinkers can begin to get a true idea of them. 

If you come to really know the meaning of the 
words of which I have been telling you, it will make 
a difference in your whole life. If you do, you will 
never make the mistake of supposing, as many 
people do, that God wants to hire us to be good by 
promising us all sorts of splendid things and good 
times after we die, if Ave will only do all manner of 
disagreeable duties now. 

You do not love your mamma because she has 
promised a prize or a treat if you will do so. She is 
your best friend, and you love her just because that 



92 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

is the most natural thing to do, and when she comes 
home with a kiss and hug for you, that is worth far 
more than if she had not come but had sent some 
money. 

In just the same way. when God's love comes to 
His children, that is the best thing He can give 
them, and any other kind of reward would seem 
very poor. 

So when we see that heaven is not something to be 
given us, but is what we must choose to have come 
into ourselves, I think we shall not wait for it, but 
shall do our best to have it begin to come now. 

We must never forget that we are just as im- 
mortal now as we are ever going to be. 




CHAPTER XIV. 

WHAT IS THE DEVIL? 

WE sometimes hear people speak about Satan, 
and the " Devil and his angels." If we had 
lived a long time ago we should have heard a great 
deal more about them than we do now. 

In old times many persons believed in witches, 
and fairies, and ghosts. We have learned better than 
that now, and know very well that there are no such 
things, though it is very easy to understand how 
people once believed in them. Many persons now 
who do not believe in witches, or fairies, or ghosts, 
do believe in devils, whom they think are servants of 
a bad angel named Satan, who have power over us, 
and can tempt us to do wrong. People used to 
think that Satan was the greatest of all the devils, 
and was almost as able to control us as God is. It 
used to be thought that he and God were always 
fighting with each other to win men's souls, either 
for hell or heaven. That was when heaven and hell 
were supposed to be particular places. 

We have learned better than that now, and as 

93 



94 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

these words have come to have a new meaning, so the 
word ' ' devil " has come to have a different meaning. 

"We no longer believe that devils are the ugly- 
looking creatures that we see painted in old pictures, 
where they were sometimes made to look as if they 
had horns, and hoofs, and breathed fire out of their 
nostrils and mouths. We know that this belief 
is just as foolish as if we believed in real witches 
who fly up to the moon on a broomstick. 

d Many good people, however, who do not believe in 
such devils at all, still think that there are evil spirits 
who are completely bad, and could not be good if 
they would, whom God allows to tempt us. I think 
this is a mistake, and that if we think of the devil as 
not being a real spirit at all, but only the sin in our 
own hearts, we shall be much nearer the truth. The 
devil is not a real creature, different from us, but 
sin and temptation are very real indeed, and we 
may well be terribly afraid of them. They are worse 
than an army of the devils like those in which men 
used to believe. 

Many heathen believe in devils or bad gods. 
They are afraid of them, and give them presents to 
try to please them and prevent their doing harm. 
They think their good gods send the good things 
which they see, and the devil sends the whirlwinds, 
and sickness, and other dreadful things. It is very 
natural that they should have thought so, for they 
cannot understand what they see around them. 



WHAT IS THE DEVIL? 



95 



We know better. We know that God sends all 
things, and does only what is right and best, and 
nothing in the world is bad except our sin. We 
cannot explain all the sad things which He lets hap- 
pen to us, but I think He will let us know the reason 
of them sometime, and until then we can wait and 
trust Him. 

Many of the good men who wrote the books in 
the Bible believed in the old idea of the devil, which 
is not strange, for every one did at that time. This 
does not make what they said any less true and 
helpful to us. 

When we read in the Bible this verse, " Resist the 
devil and he will flee from you," it means that we 
must fight against the naughty wishes and the bad 
thoughts which are in our minds. 

If a girl whispers at school when the teacher's 
back is turned, and then sits still when she tells all 
those who whispered to stand, she is tempted to do 
wrong by the devil, or the wrong in her own self. 

If she said to herself, "I won't whisper, even 
though the teacher is not looking, because it is 
against the rule," that would have been " resisting 
the devil," and the next time it would have been 
easier to do right. 

If we do wrong it is always our own fault, for we 
know better and have the power to do right if we try ; 
it is wrong for us to lay the blame on any one, or think 
that some devil outside ourselves has made us bad. 



96 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THLNKERS. 

Perhaps you have heard Bible stories about Jesus 
" casting out devils." In old times people understood 
very little about illness, and there were no wise doc- 
tors, as there are now, who understood how to make 
sick people well. 

When men had fits and fell down and frothed at 
the mouth, or when they were insane and did strange 
things and talked wildly, most people believed that 
these poor creatures had devils in them who made 
them act so. 

When Jesus cured those who were insane or had 
fits, it was simply restoring them to their right 
minds. The change was so great that it seemed as 
if a wicked spirit had given place to a good spirit, 
and so it was said that he " cast out devils." 

We may be very sure that even if there were such 
devils in the world as men used to believe in, they 
could never have any power over us unless we chose 
to let them. No one does wrong unless it is his 
own fault. 




CHAPTER XV. 

SIN. 

WE are so made that, unlike animals, we can 
choose to do right or wrong, and, as I said 
before, no one could ever compel us to do wrong if 
we did not want to, and even God could not force 
us to be good, if we did not choose to be so. 

God hates sin, and yet he loves us so much that 
he would forgive the meanest, most hateful man in 
the world, the minute he was sorry. Sometimes 
fathers never forgive their sons who have done 
wrong, but God's love is as much greater than ours, 
as the ocean is greater than a drop of water, and 
nothing can ever keep his love from us, if we really 
want it. But although he forgives, he can never 
change any wrong that has been done. 

It always has to stay as a terrible fact, which all 
the tears in the world can never wash out. That is 
the dreadful thing about sin, it can never, never be 
just the same as if it had not been. Although it 
may be forgiven we must still remember it and be 
ashamed of it. 

97 



98 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

A bad man is the most foolish kind of a man in the 
world, for to do wrong is to fight against one's self. 

Suppose a boy wanted to play a game of marbles, 
and said : " I am not going to take the trouble to find 
a flat place as the other boys do, I am going to play 
right here on this side of a hill where I am." Pretty 
soon this foolish boy would find all his marbles roll- 
ing away from him and Avould see that if he wanted 
to have a good time, he could not do just as he 
pleased ; he must act with the laws of this world, and 
not against them, for it is a law of Nature which 
makes marbles roll down hill. 

Suppose he said : " I want to fly my kite and I am 
going to fly it just where I want to, I don't care what 
the other boys do." So he goes into the woods where 
his kite is caught among the branches of the trees 
and he finds he cannot fly it. If he wants to fly his 
kite he must obey the laws of Nature and go where 
the wind is. 

Suppose he wants to coast, but says: "I don't 
want to drag my sled up hill, and I won't ; I am going 
down hill all the time." 

How you would laugh at any boy who should talk 
in this way. You would say he must be a baby, not 
to know that if he wants to coast down hill he must 
first get to the top of it. 

Suppose this boy wanted to skate and said : " I 
hate cold weather, I am not going to skate until next 
summer." 



sin. 99 

You can easily see that a boy who acted like this, 
although he might have his own way, would never 
have a good time, for he would be always fighting 
against the laws of this world. 

If we wish to be happy we must always work with 
the laws of this world, and never against them, as I 
said before. 

All this you will easily see. Now can you not see 
just as plainly, that any one who is selfish, or 
mean, or saucy to his mother — that is, any one who 
sets up his own way against God's way, is fighting 
against the laws of this world just as much as the 
boy Avho was determined to fly his kite among the 
trees ? 

Any child who tries to have a good time and 
thinks only of what he wants, no matter whether it 
is right or not, is working against fixed laws and can 
never be really happy. 

God has so made us that the selfish man is sure to 
fight against the very thing that he wants ; it is only 
by thinking of others as well as ourselves that we 
can ever get what we want. 

If you can once come to understand all this that I 
have been saying, you will have learned the most im- 
portant thing in the world for you to know, and you 
will be much wiser than many grown people who 
have never learned it. 

When selfish people and those who do not love 
God die, we feel sure that wherever they may be 



TOO GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS, 

or whatever they may do in all the time to come, they 
can never be happy unless they completely change ; 
we know that if a boy begins to be selfish and does 
not get over it before he is a man, he will be very 
likely to be selfish all his life, and if he has lived a 
long life of selfishness, it will be very hard indeed 
for him to ever change. 

Just think how terrible it would be for any man 
to live on, and on, thousands of years, always fight- 
ing against the best part of himself, and hating God 
and the whole world. 

This would be as dreadful as being burned in the 
" lake of fire," of which we read in the Bible. 

When one thinks how terrible sin is, I do not 
wonder that the good men who wrote in the Bible 
about what happens to the wicked in the next life, 
should have used such words, for they did not know 
of any other way in which to tell how dreadful it is. 




^ 



CHAPTER XVI. 

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

THE Bible is not one book. It is a great number 
of small books and letters bound together. 

There are sixty-six in all. Some of these are 
very short, and could be read in a few minutes. 

These books were written at different times, in 
different places, by a great many different men. 

Some of them were kings, some were preachers, 
and others were shepherds and fishermen. Some of 
the writers we know nothing about. 

The word Bible means "The Book." The first 
part of it, which is the larger part, is called the Old 
Testament. It was written in the ancient Hebrew 
language, which is not spoken now. Those who. 

p6di : DVn *A \n ttpn nnb : paa aa p owa ntfto 

^i : w^n *fya^ o>rr?D uru* itfao • wriiirriK u 1 ? 

roVabn ^ *a .♦ jhri f& tt^ntfi os* >:> • n&nb uk*3A 

t fo« • 0^3^ m^onm rnrani 

HEBREW. 

spoke it then were called Hebrews or Jews. There 

IOI 



102 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

are a great many Jews among us now who speak 
English as we do, but many of them can read the 
Hebrew. 

We do not know when the oldest part of the 
Bible was written. It was probably more than three 
thousand years ago. It was nearly eighteen hun- 
dred years ago that the latest part of the New Tes- 
tament was written, so vou see the books of the 
Bible were many hundreds of years in the making 
before they were ever put together in one volume. 

The books of the New Testament did not begin to 
be written until after Jesus had died. He never 
wrote any thing himself, but his friends wrote books 
about him and told what he said and did. 

The books of the New Testament were written 
almost entirely in the Greek language. These are 

TA VTAMtpA^fANToi i VAi ±A AV*MTiXo/to(<©£oKAo^ 
G.nA£ohfBA®oNA£K£pKi°fKATvr*Eb&£vt}oroTAfi*of 
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£*PA <pB&&M£AP+OHA noi 6 1+oKAl n^9<'^V4A/ v \o 



more important for us to read than those of the Old 
Testament, because they give us the truest ideas of 
God. 

When they were written people had come to know 
more about God, and had higher and purer ideas 
than those men of whom we read in the oldest books 
in the Bible. 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? IO3 

No book in the world has ever had half so many 
readers as the Bible has. Thousands and tens of 
thousands of books have been written about it, to 
explain it and to tell what was thought about it. It 
has been translated into almost every language in 
the world. 

This wonderful book, which we sometimes call 
" The Good Book," has been the comfort and help 
of millions of the wisest and best people Avho ever 
lived. 

Many persons have allowed themselves to be 
killed rather than give up reading their Bibles. I re- 
member, in reading of one of those cruel wars about 
religion, of which I shall tell you in another place, 
how a woman was afraid that her Bible would be 
taken from her ; so she studied hard and learned by 
heart one of the letters in the New Testament, so 
that if it were taken from her she could still hold 
some of the precious words in her mind. 

Another woman put her Bible into her dough and 
baked it in a loaf of bread, so when the soldiers en- 
tered her house to look for it they could not find it. 

Now let us see why this book is so much loved. 
First of all, because it tells us about the things which 
every one who thinks, wishes more than any thing 
else to know. 

It tells us who we are, and what we are here in 
this world for, and that we are going to live forever. 
It tells us that we are not alone in this great world, 



104 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

but that we have a Father. It tells us how to make 
our lives rich and sweet, how to be beautiful souls, 
how to make heaven upon this earth. 

Perhaps all this seems tiresome to you little folks. 
Dear papa, whom you have seen, is clearer to you 
than the Father in heaven whom you do not know 
very well yet. But by and by I think the time will 
come when the hunger in your life for some one 
higher, better, stronger, than any thing you have 
known, will come to you, and only God Himself 
can satisfy that. And the book which tells about 
God will be the dearest to you. 





CHAPTEE XVII. 



WHAT IS GODS WORD * 



THE world lias found the Bible so precious and 
full of God's truth that men have come to call 
it " God's Wordy I think this needs a little expla- 
nation, for you may not quite understand it. 

God, as you know, has no body like ours. He has 
no mouth with which to speak, and no hand with 
which to write ; so " God's Word " could not be 
words that He either spoke aloud or wrote. God 
has made us all, and put part of His own spirit into 
each one of us ; but all through the ages, to some men 
more than to others, there came the power to under- 
stand the thoughts of God and to see new truths 
about Him. 

These men spoke out boldly, saying what they 
felt God meant them to tell, and they were said to 
be " inspired." Inspiration means a breathing in, 
and when a man was called " inspired," it meant that 
he had taken into his mind the thoughts of God, just 
as he breathed into his lungs the sweet, fresh air. 

Not only those who wrote the great truths in the 



105 



I06 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Bible, but others, since then, have been in greater or 
less degree inspired to speak new truth. 

Whoever sees God's truth more clearly than others, 
and speaks it out bravely, is His messenger of truth, 
that is, His prophet. 

There is some of God's truth, that is to say, God's 
Word, which is not written in the Bible, because we 
have learned about it since the Bible was finished. 

But the most important truths, the deepest ones, 
on which the others rest, are to be found in the New 
Testament. 

The Bible, as I said, contains many different kinds 
of books. Some of these are long records of names 
and histories which will not interest you much until 
you are older and know something about the histo- 
ries of other nations. 

But there are many delightful stories which have 
charmed all little people since the time when the 
Hebrew fathers told them to their little boys and 
girls thousands of years ago. They are just as inter- 
esting as the stories about George Washington which 
your papa tells you. 

We see in all these histories and stories how, little 
by little, God's Word, that is, His truth, came to 
men ; these histories are like the outer husk or shell 
which contains the sweet meat, or God's Word, 
within them. 

So when we say the Bible is God's Word, we 
must always understand that the part which is His 



WHAT IS GOD'S WORD? 107 

Word is that which, tells us about God and our 
duties to Him and to each other, and that the stories 
and histories and poems are helps in teaching us all 
these important truths. 

You know how much better you remember any 
thing when there is a story to it. It is always more 
interesting to hear about people who have done good 
things, or who have been stupid or wicked and done 
foolish things, than it is to read rules about being 
good, and commands against doing wrong. Now the 
Bible is full of these accounts of wise and foolish, 
and kind and selfish people, who were very much 
like us in many ways ; and so the stories of their 
successes or mistakes can be a great help to us. 

To be sure, all the important truths of the Bible 
could have been told in much fewer words and made 
clearer and plainer ; and sometimes when we get 
puzzled over the meaning of many things in it, we 
wish it had been different. But it is probably best 
for us that it is just as it is. 

God did not intend to make every thing perfectly 
easy and simple to understand. He meant to have 
us use our minds, and do a great deal of thinking 
for ourselves, and to learn all that we can from the 
thoughts of others. 

The men who have given us different parts of 
God's Word or truth did not all think alike, for they 
lived in different times and places ; some were wiser 
than others, and because they lived later they knew 



108 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

more than, those who came before them. But they 
were alike in one thing. They believed in one God 
and wanted to serve Him. 

It is very interesting and wonderful to see by 
what slow steps the thought of God grew in the 
minds of men, and how, little by little, after many 
mistakes and blunders, and holding many foolish 
notions, they came to know God, and to know some- 
thing of what He thinks and does. 

You will sometimes hear it said that the Bible is 
a revelation of God. A revelation is something 
that is revealed or shown. If you were making 
Christmas presents for some one, and should tell me 
about it, and beg me not to " reveal " the secret, that 
would mean not to tell any one about it. When you 
make a revelation, that is, reveal what you have 
done, you tell something that was not known before. 

Now whenever a man has had the thoughts of 
God, a revelation of God has come to him ; and we 
find that in almost all these sixty-six books of the 
Bible, besides much history and grand poetry, we 
have accounts of many revelations of God. 

I want you little folks to grow to love the Bible 
very much, and to think it the best book in the 
world. We get tired of most other books after we 
have read them a few times, but when we come to 
understand the Bible we never get tired of it. There 
is always something new and beautiful in it. 

The most blessed thing about the Bible is the 



WHAT IS GOD'S WORD? IO9 

story of Jesus, whom God sent to teach us and re- 
veal Him to us. We may learn many things from 
reading about Joseph and Samuel, and David the 
shepherd boy. But none of them were like Jesus. 
They sometimes did very foolish and wicked things, 
but we read that Jesus was always good. So if all 
the Bible were lost except the little part of it which 
tells about Jesus, we should feel that we had the 
best part left. 

The Bible tells us not only about God, and how 
good and wise He is, but it tells us also about our- 
selves, that we are His children, and have wandered 
away like lost sheep from their shepherd, and how, 
by God's wonderful love and mercy, we may grow 
to be worthy of being His sons and daughters, and 
able to " reveal " Him to those who do not know 
Him. 





CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE HEBREW STORY OF THE BEGINNINGS. 

PROBABLY the first thing that a baby ever 
thinks of is to have plenty of milk and to be 
kept nice and warm. 

After he gets a little older, he begins to think 
about his mother, and sees how she does every thing 
for him. So long as he is a baby he never knows 
much about her. It is some time before he begins 
to know and love her with that human love which 
is such a different thing from that kind of feeling 
which chickens and kittens have for their mothers. 

Now a nation and a race grow very much in the 
same way that a baby does. 

Away back in the dim, far-off ages of which we 
know so little, when the nations were in their baby- 
hood, they probably thought most of all about 
getting plenty of food, and of wearing something 
which should keep off the cold. 

As time went on, they began to think of many 
other things, and to wonder about the great world 
in which they found themselves. They saw many 



THE HEBREW STORY OF THE BEGINNINGS. Ill 

strange tilings which they could not understand at 
all, and they tried, in the best way they knew, to 
explain them. 

As I have already told you, animals never wonder 
about themselves nor think about who made them. 
But all human beings, even the lowest savages, have 
wondered about the world and tried to explain to 
themselves how it was made and how every thing 
began. 

Sometimes their ideas were very queer and seem 
silly to us. But we must remember that if we had 
never been taught we should probably have never 
thought out any thing better than did these poor 
people who were much like grown-up children. 

Sometimes, as they lay out all night under the 
stars, watching their flocks of sheep, they began to 
wonder and think. They saw the bright moon come 
up from behind the mountains and slowly move 
across the sky, and they were afraid of this strange- 
shining thing. 

They thought it must be alive, and so they would 
sometimes pray to it as if it were their god. They 
heard the wind rustling in the trees, and they thought 
this must be the whisperings of a god. So they 
built altars under them, and prayed to this god that 
spoke to them through the leaves. For many hun- 
dreds of years people believed in sacred trees, and 
listened, half in fear, to the secrets which the winds 
told to the leaves. 



112 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Sometimes they bowed down to sticks and stones, 
thinking that they were bewitched, or that a god 
lived in them. Sometimes they prayed to the great 
red sun, or made little images of their gods. It was 
hard for them to think of a god whom they could 
not see. They believed in many gods ; they knew 
nothing of the one, true God. 

But among all these nations was one which, as 
far back as we can learn any thing about it, had a 
better and purer idea of God than any other. He 
was sometimes called Elohim, but more often Ya- 
hveh, or as we say, — Jehovah. 

This people was the Hebrew. Their writings 
are more important than the religious writings 
of all the other ancient nations put together. 

Among their oldest records are two accounts of 
how they thought every thing began. We do not 
know when, or by whom, they were written, but 
they are very simple and beautiful. 

Many years after they were first written they were 
joined with other ancient stories which had been 
handed down from father to son, and this collection 
of stories was called the Book of Genesis. The word 
" Genesis " means very much the same as the word 
Beginning. This book, you must remember, was 
in the Hebrew language, and was written, not 
printed. This was probably more than twenty-five 
hundred years before there were any printed books. 

Some of the stories of the creation told by other 



THE HEBREW STORY OF THE BEGINNINGS. 113 

ancient nations are a little like those of the Hebrews, 
but I know of none that are so grand, and simple, and 
so near to the truth as those in Genesis. 

It is very surprising to find so long, long ago, 
when people knew so little, such stories of the be- 
ginnings as these. 

The men who wrote these must have thought very 
deeply and have seen much more of the truth than 
did the other people among whom they lived. They 
did not know all the facts which we have since 
learned, about the world being round like a ball, and 
about its having taken hundreds of thousands of 
years to get ready for men to live upon it. 

They did not know that the sun was made before 
the earth, and that the little stars which seem so 
small are really great suns themselves. 

They thought, as every one else in those times did, 
that the earth was larger and more important than 
any thing else, and that the sun and moon and stars 
were made afterward simply for the benefit of the 
people upon the earth. 

It is very natural that they should have thought 
this, for in their time, when people had none of the 
books and telescopes and wonderful instruments 
that we have now, they could not have known any 
better. 

But the writers of these stories in Genesis did see 
that all things were not made at once. In one ac- 
count we read how that the grass and trees grew 



114 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

first, and afterwards that the animals were made, and 
last of all, the highest and noblest work of God, a 
human being. Most important of all was this, — they 
saw that one God made all things. This was a great 
thing to see in those times, when many people wor- 
shipped the sun or moon, or, worse still, prayed to 
idols which they themselves had made. 

Another thing which they saw and which was one 
of the greatest thoughts that ever came to a man, was 
that God made man in His own image ; that is, God 
made man, not like the animals who have no spirits, 
but of the same nature as Himself. 

Many people had thought that men and women 
were no better than animals, but here was a man 
who said that men were made in God's image, and 
this was a great thought, greater than he himself 
could know. 

The men who wrote these stories in this Book of 
the Beginnings did not know very much about God, 
for we find they speak of Him as " walking in the 
garden," and talking with a real voice which men 
could hear. 

They thought that God had a body as we have. The 
Hebrews did not for a long time come to really know 
that the God whom they worshipped was the only 
one. But as time went on, they came to see that He 
was the only real God that there was, and unlike the 
gods of the heathen, was a Spirit and could not be 
represented by any thing men could make. 




I 



CHAPTER XIX. 

STORIES IJS" GENESIS. 

N this Book of the Beginnings of which I told 
you, there are very many interesting stories, 
which, as they are among the oldest in the world, I 
suppose have been read more than any others that 
ever were written. 

First of all come the stories of Adam and Eve, 
and of their sons, Cain and Abel. Then we come 
to the story of a great flood, and a good man, Noah, 
who built a great boat which he called an " ark,' 7 
and went into it with all his children and stayed until 
the waters had gone down. 

When I was a little girl I thought this story of 
the flood in Genesis was the only one ever written 
about it. But a few years ago, some men who were 
digging on the ruins of a very old heathen city 
found a broken tablet on which there was an account 
of this same flood. This is very interesting, but is a 
little different from the one in Genesis. 

One story in this book gives the idea which the 
ancient Hebrews had about the different languages 

ii5 



Il6 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS 

which people speak. It is the story of the Tower of 
Babel. The man who wrote it thought that all 
people spoke one language at first, but that God 
was angry with them for trying to build a very high 
tower, and suddenly stopped them by giving them 
new languages, so that the workmen could not under- 
stand one another, and could not go on with the 
work. I do not know how this story grew ; I sup- 



I'J-.-i'i 
onm 






Hi 













■■■■■■■-■' 



BACK OF TABLET, WITH ACCOUNT OF THE FLOOD. 

pose the man who first wrote it did not know either ; 
he probably just wrote it down as it had been told 
to him. 

The most interesting of all the stories in Genesis 
are those about Abram, who was afterwards called 
Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, and of his 
son Isaac, and Isaac's son, Jacob, and his family. 



STORIES IN GENESIS. \\J 

I hope you know all these stories ; if not, you 
must be sure to ask some one to tell them to yon, or 
read them for yourself in the Children's Bible. 

Abram was one of the grandest men in all the 
ancient world. Down to the time when he lived, 
we know of no one who can in the least be com- 
pared to him, except one man only. He was called 
Zoroaster, and is said to have lived before Abram. 
He believed in one good Spirit, and he gave the 
world many noble thoughts, but we do not read of 
him in the Bible, and do not know much about him. 

When Abram was young, he lived in a great city 
named Ur, which had a wall around it. In this city 
the people prayed to the moon. I have seen a hymn 
of praise to the moon goddess that was dug up not 
long ago in the ruins of this old city. 

After Abraham had married his wife Sarah, and 
had lived many years in this eastern land, he felt that 
it was (rod's will for him to turn his face away from 
the land of his fathers and seek a new country. It 
must have been hard for him to go, but he was not 
afraid, for he was sure his God would guide him. 

In that country, which was warmer than ours, 
people lived quite simply, especially outside of the 
cities. They had but little furniture, and sat on 
mats and slept in tents. 

They had clothing made of cloth which the women 
spun and wove. The men wore long robes much 
like the women ; they had long hair also, and some- 



Il8 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

times wore bracelets just as the women did. They 
also often carried, or wore on the wrist, a seal cut in 
agate or hard stone. Many of those seals have been 
found buried in their tombs. 

We read in the story that Abram had more than 
one wife at the same time. We shall find as we go 
on that many good men in those old times did things 
which we now know to be wrong, but then they 
probably never thought about it. Abram knew 
very little about God's will, and he had always been 
surrounded by heathen customs, so it is not strange 
that he should do as others did. 

For a long time, you remember, he had no children, 
and in those days people loved very much to have 
children and were very sad when they had none. 
But after a while Isaac was born, when Abram was 
quite an old man. 

How glad he must have been to see for the first 
time the little black-eyed baby who was wrapped 
up tight in the bandages which they used to put 
around babies in old times. To think that this dear 
little child was really his own, when he had been 
afraid he should never have one ! 

In some of the heathen nations which Abraham 
had seen, there had been a horrible custom of mak- 
ing sacrifices of the first-born children to the gods. 
The people were afraid of their gods and thought 
them very cruel. They thought the only way in 
which they could please them when they were angry 



STORIES IN GENESIS. 1 19 

was to give them whatever they loved the most. Of 
course they loved their children more than any thing 
else, and it must have been a terribly sad thing for 
them to kill their dear little babies. It seems almost 
too dreadful to believe, but yet so strongly have 
many thousands of people felt this, that even down 
to almost the present time, many heathen women 
have thrown their children into the river to drown, 
because they thought their gods wanted them to do so. 
Abraham was not a heathen ; he believed in the 
true God. But he did not know much about Him, 
and he could not understand as we do that He is a 
God of love. Abraham feared God. He knew 
how many nations sacrificed their sons to their gods, 
and one nisjht the terrible thought came to him that 
his God would have him give up his darling, only 
son, Isaac. Like a brave, noble man, as he was, 
he never stopped even to tell any one, but the 
next day took Isaac and prepared to do what he 
thought God wanted him to do. You know the 
story ; how he bound the lad and, with aching heart, 
prepared to take this precious life which was so dear 
to him. But then, as clearly as if God had spoken 
to him with a real voice, came the thought that all 
the sacrifice which God asked of him was a willing 
heart. He saw at last clearly that God could never 
wish him to kill his own child, the child of faith 
and so many prayers. And looking around, he saw 
a sheep in the bushes, and gladly placed him upon 
the altar instead of his dear child. 



120 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Abraham lived to be very old, and had other 
sons, bnt never one whom he loved as he did Isaac. 
When Isaac was old enough to be married, Abra- 
ham did not want to have him take a wife from the 
women who lived around them, so you remember 
how the story tells of his sending his servant to find 
a wife for the young man from his own friends and 
father's family, who lived far away. 

The story of how the servant found Rebekah, and 
gave her presents of gold rings and bracelets, and 
how she gave him water to drink at the well, is a 
charming one, and it gives us a pretty little picture 
of that simple life of which in those days we know 
so little. Isaac's mother, Sarah, had died, but his 
wife, Rebekah, became dear to him and comforted 
him after his mother's death. 

Abraham lived to see his dear son Isaac married 
and happy, and then he also died and was buried by 
the side of his wife Sarah, in the rocky chamber, or 
tomb, which he had bought as a burial-place. This 
tomb, which is more than thirty-five hundred years 
old, is still standing. From what little I have told 
you about Abraham, you will find it hard to under- 
stand why it was that the Jews always looked back 
to him as the great head and father of their race. 
To understand this you must read all it says about 
him in these stories in Genesis, and remember that 
they were not written down until hundreds of years 
after he lived, so I suppose many stories about him 



STORIES IA T GENESIS. 121 

were forgotten. But although we do not know very 
much about him, we know enough to see that he was 
a very great and good man, and worthy to be the 
founder of a great race. 

He had faith in God ; he dared to follow the voice 
of God which spoke through his own conscience ; he 
was willing to leave his home and live among stran- 
gers in a strange land when he thought it was God's 
will. He was even willing to give up what was 
dearest to him when he thought it was right. And 
so his name shall stand forever as the man of Faith 
and the Father of the Faithful. 





CHAPTER XX. 



ISAAC AND HIS CHILDREN. 



ISAAC seems to have been a very different man 
from his father, Abraham. He lived a quiet 
life, and we do not read that he ever did any thing 
very remarkable. He and his children and great 
family of servants lived in tents and sj3ent the most 
of their time in taking care of their sheep and cattle. 

They dug wells, so that there should be plenty of 
water for their herds and flocks. They gave each 
of these wells a name and prized them very highly, 
for their cattle would have died without them. The 
people who lived around them, and also had herds 
and flocks, wanted their wells, and they often had 
quarrels about them. But Isaac seems to have been 
very fair and good-natured about it. 

He had two little sons who were twins, whom 
you know were called Esau and Jacob. These boys 
grew up to be very different from each other. They 
slept at night on the same sheepskin spread besicle 
their tent curtain. In the morning they ate their 
simple breakfast, very likely with their Angers, for 



ISAAC AND HIS CHILDREN. 1 23 

there probably were no spoons and certainly no 
forks in those days. After their breakfasts there 
were no lessons to be learned nor schools to go to. 

I suppose neither they nor their father ever knew 
how to read a letter. The little twins played with 
the lambs and kids, and watched the shepherds, who 
were their father's slaves, as they watered their flocks 
and then drove them off into the fields or up on the 
hills to pasture. 

As they grew up, Esau learned to shoot the deer 
with his arrows, and brought venison home for his 
father to eat. The story says that Isaac loved Esau, 
because he brought him this good venison to eat, 
which seems to me a rather selfish reason. Jacob 
did not go hunting ; he was a quiet man, and stayed 
at home, and planted a garden and raised vegetables. 
You know the story of how he met Esau one day, 
when he was hungry and faint, and refused to give 
him any food until Esau had given him his birthright. 

This was a mean and selfish thing for Jacob to do ; 
it was taking an unfair advantage of his brother. 
In almost all countries in ancient times the oldest 
boy had v hat was called the birthright ; he received 
a special blessing from his father, and had special 
favor shown him. We have nothing like that now 
in our country, but in some nations the oldest son 
still has special favors, and gets much more of his 
father's money when he dies than any of the other 
children do. We do not think this is just and fair ; 



124 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

we believe here in treating all the children of a 
family exactly alike ; but as this was not the custom 
in the time of Jacob, it was not fair for him to have 
treated his brother in the way he did. You remem- 
ber, also, how, when Isaac was old and blind, Jacob 
told a lie and deceived his father, so as to get the 
blessing before the aged man should die. 

After this you know how angry Esau was, and 
how he tried to kill his brother. So Jacob had to 
leave his home for fear of Esau ; and he started to 
go towards the place from which his mother had 
come when she left her father's home and came with 
Abraham's servant to be Isaac's wife. 

On the journey he had a strange dream, which 
frightened him ; he dreamed that his God came and 
talked with him, and promised him that He would 
make him the father of a great family. So when he 
waked in the morning he set up a stone and poured 
oil on it. 

This was a common custom among the people of 
those times. When any thing wonderful had taken 
place, they set up a stone to mark the spot. 

When Jacob went on his journey he said to him- 
self, if God would go with him, and take good care 
of him, and bring him safely back again, then he 
would serve Him, and He should be his God. Jacob 
knew very little about the real, true God, and he did 
not know that He always loves us, and that we 
ought to love and serve Him whether He gives us 
what we want or not. 



ISAAC AND HIS CHILDREN. 125 

You know the story ; how Jacob went on and 
came to his uncle's house ; and how, after a while, 
he married his cousins, Leah and Rachel ; and as the 
years went on had children, and servants, and a 
large family of his own, and a great many flocks and 
herds. Esau had married heathen women, and this 
had troubled Isaac and Rebekah very much, and 
they were glad to have Jacob marry among their 
own people. 

We read in the story, however, that Jacob's uncle 
had images of gods, and that when, after many 
years, Jacob decided to take his great family and go 
back to the country where he was born, his wife 
Rachel stole these gods and carried them away with 
her, showing she believed in them also. 

I suppose some of you little folks knoAV what 
" moving " means in our days. You know how the 
furniture, and carpets, and pictures are packed up 
in boxes and sent off on the express wagon and car- 
ried to the new house, or else put upon the cars and 
carried to another city, But in those old times, 
when there were no wagons nor cars, and every 
thing had to be carried on the backs of camels or 
donkeys, it was a very different thing. There was 
not much furniture though, and no trunks of clothes, 
so the things were easily packed on the donkeys' 
backs, and Jacob, with his two wives and eleven 
sons, his daughters and servants, and his flocks and 
herds, set forth. The story tells us how he met his 



126 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

brother Esau, whom lie had not seen for years, and 
how they became friendly again. 

After that we read how he came to Bethel, the 
place where one night, years before, he had that 
strange dream of which I told you. When he 
thought how lonely and sad he had been then, and 
when he looked around and saw the great family 
and the riches he had gained, he remembered the 
promise he had made that if God would bless him 
he would serve Him. So he took all the images of 
heathen gods which his wives and servants had and 
buried them, and built an altar to his own God who 
had so greatly blessed him. After that his name 
was changed and he was no longer called Jacob, but 
Israel. 

Isaac, who was a very old man, lived to see Jacob 
return and bring with him his twelve sons ; the last 
one of all, the little baby, Benjamin, had been born 
on the way. After this Isaac died, and his two 
sons, Jacob and Esau, buried him. 

The rest of the story of Israel belongs to the story 
of Joseph, who was the most famous of all his sons. 

Among all ancient writings I do not know of one 
which is so interesting and delightful as the story of 
Joseph. I shall not stop to tell you about it, but if 
you do not know any other of these old Hebrew 
stories in this Book of the Beginnings, you must be 
sure and read this one. 



CHAPTER XXI 



THE LAND OF EGYPT. 



IX order to understand the story of Joseph and 
of Moses, the next great Hebrew, who lived 
after him, we must know something about that 
strange, old country, Egypt, in which they lived for 
so many years. 

Lono; before Abraham was born and the Hebrew 
people began to be a nation, Egypt was an old 
country. The people did not live in tents. 

The kings and the rich people lived in houses 
built of stone, and the slaves and poor men lived in 
little huts of baked mud. There were many large 
cities filled with fine buildings. The finest of these 
were temples for the gods of the Egyptians. Many 
of these had long rows of sphinxes and obelisks 
which led up to them. The sphinxes were cut 
out of stone and were usually made to look like 
the body of a lion and the head of a woman. The 
obelisks were tall monuments looking something 
like Bunker Hill monument, only they were much 
smaller, and were cut out of one solid piece of stone. 

127 



128 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

If any of you have ever been in Central Park 
in New York City, I suppose you know what an 
Egyptian obelisk is, for there is one there which 
was brought all the way across the ocean from 
Egypt only a few years ago. It has a curious kind 
of writing carved on the outside of it, and it is very 
old indeed. It looks like the very same obelisks 
which Jacob and Joseph saw when they were in 
Egypt. 

The Egyptians were very intelligent people for 
the time in which they lived, and knew much more 
than most other nations. 

They knew something about the stars, and could 
divide the year into twelve months, and these into 
three hundred and sixty-five days. They knew how 
to make glass and dishes of porcelain, and they could 
cut precious stones, like rubies and diamonds, and 
make many curious things. 

They could build boats and knew how to make 
swords and daggers and shields to use in time of 
war. They learned also to make wheels, and they 
used these in their war chariots. 

There were few trees in the land of Egypt ; there 
were no green hills and little brooks running over 
the pebbles ; there were no pretty little valleys and 
meadows filled with wild flowers, such as we see in 
our country. There was nothing in nature for the 
Egyptians to see as they looked around them but 
three or four great things. There was the broad, 



THE LAND OF EGYPT. 1 29 

clear, beautiful blue sky over their heads, with 
never a cloud in it; no black thunder-clouds, nor 
soft white clouds, nor red sunset-clouds ; always the 
same clear blue, from which the bright sun by day, 
or the far-away stars by night, shone through all 
the time. Then there was the great, level desert, 
stretching out on all sides, just as the ocean looks 
when one is on a ship. And through this great, 
level country flowed one great river, the only river 
in all the land. 

The Egyptians did not know how to make beau- 
tiful statues and temples as the Greeks did ; but 
every thing, instead of being beautiful, was very 
larsce and strong and errand. 

They had many stone quarries in which thousands 
of slaves worked, cutting out huge blocks of stone. 

The most wonderful things which the Egyptians 
ever made were the Pyramids. These were built of 
immense masses of stone. Some of these stones are 
so large that with all our machinery and improved 
tools and instruments for working, we, in our time, 
could never have lifted them and put them into 
place. No one knows how the Egyptians ever did 
it. Their work is a wonder to every one. 

These pyramids were built for the tombs of kings. 
After they died their bodies were put into a little 
chamber in the centre of the great mass of stones. 

It took many years to build these, and tens of 
thousands of unhappy slaves were forced to work 



130 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

upon them. One can now climb to the top of the 
highest pyramid, because the smootli outside stones 
have been carried away for building, and its surface 
is no longer a straight slope, but is like a very long 
flight of stairs. 

If you should climb to the top of the Great Pyra- 
mid you would see a strange sight. Beneath your 
feet would be great, heavy stones, nicely cut and 
fitted together, brought there by the toiling slaves 
thousands of years ago. On one side, stretching 
out as far as where the sky seems to meet the earth, 
would be the great sandy desert. No one dares 
travel over this on foot or on horseback, only on 
the backs of camels, who are called the " ships of 
the desert." 

If you turned to look on the other side you 
would see a long, broad river coming from the 
south and flowing towards the north. This was 
the great river Nile. Without this wonderful river 
no one could have lived in this country where 
there is scarcely any rain. This broad stream over- 
flowed its banks every year and carried water and 
mud several miles back from its borders towards 
the desert. 

Wherever the water sank into the soil, grass and 
plants and trees grew, so that a long, narrow strip 
of land like a green ribbon stretched along the 
banks of the river. 

The hot winds of the desert forever blew the 



lliliiiiii 




I52 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

yellow, shifting sands towards the fields and groves 
along the river's bank, but the great Nile never 
failed to bring them the precious waters and keep 
them fresh and green. 

Would you not like to stand on this great pyra- 
mid, which towers up into the air, higher than al- 
most any thing ever built by man, except the great 
Washington monument at Washington ? Would it 
not seem strange to look upon this immense tomb of 
the old Egyptian king and think that this very same 
pyramid was standing there on the edge of the des- 
ert when Abraham, and Jacob, and Joseph, and 
Moses were in Egypt ? I suppose you all know 
many people who like old furniture and pictures, 
and cups and saucers, and are very happy if they 
can show you the wedding dress of their great- 
grandmother who lived only one hundred years ago. 
But think of seeing something like these pyramids, 
Avhich are at least forty hundred years old ! 

The pyramids were the most wonderful, but also 
the most foolish kind of tombs ever built. Nothing 
could be more useless than to make so many thou- 
sand men work for so many years, to pile up th.3se 
great blocks of stone. As we look at it, a simple 
grave and a plain tombstone would have done as 
well. But the ancient Egyptian kings did not think 
so. They were proud and wished to make them- 
selves famous, so that they should always be remem- 
bered in some way. 



THE LAND OF EGYPT. 1 33 

In this warm country where people did not have 
to wear many clothes and could live chiefly on dates 
and other things which grew in abundance, it was 
easy to support many men very cheaply. The kings 
in these days had great power and could do very 
much as they pleased, so they forced men to work 
for them for little or no pay. 

The Egyptians believed as we do that their souls 
would not die. But, unlike us, they believed that 
after a great many years the soul of the dead man 
would come back and live again in his body. So 
you see one reason why they were very anxious to 
have their bodies kept after death in a very strong, 
safe place, cut out of the rock. After their friends 
died, they had their flesh preserved in such a way 
that it would not decay and could be kept for thou- 
sands of years. The bodies thus preserved were 
called " mummies," and I presume some of you have 
seen a few of them in museums. They are brown and 
withered and very unpleasant to look at. 

The religion of the Egyptians was a very curious 
one. Some of the wisest men believed in one God. 
But as they thought of His goodness, and power, 
and justice, of His sending the rain, of His creating 
all life, and of the many things which belong to 
God's nature, they tried to make some kind of a 
sign or image, which should stand for each one of 
their different thoughts about God. In a little 
while the ignorant people began to take these images 



134 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

which stood as signs for the different thoughts about 
God, as real gods themselves. Many of these images 
had the body like that of a man and the head like 
that of a hawk or some other kind of bird or animal. 

Some live animals were thought to be sacred and 
were kept in temples and were carefully waited upon 
by priests. Cats and crocodiles and sometimes bulls 
and hawks were considered so sacred that if a man 
killed one even by accident he was put to death. 

There were a great many priests ; they knew much 
more than the soldiers and the common people. 
They could read and write and had a great deal of 
power over the minds of the ignorant. When 
we read in the story of Moses that " he was learned 
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," I think we can 
understand now a little about what that means. 
We see that he lived in a very civilized country, and 
that in the cities, among the scholars and wise men 
of his time, he must have seen a great deal that was 
very rich and splendid, as well as much that was 
very cruel and wicked. 

His life was certainly quite different from that of 
the simple herdsmen, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
and we shall see that this education which he re- 
ceived had a great deal to do in preparing him to be 
the wise leader of his people. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



MIOSES. 



THE last story which we find written in Genesis 
is about Joseph. We learn what a great and 
famous man he became, and how his eleven brothers 
and their families came and lived with him in Egypt. 

For many, many years they lived in Egypt, and as 
time went on, these descendants of Israel increased 
in number and became a great people. 

We hear nothing about them for very many years. 
Although they lived in Egypt they kept themselves 
as a separate people, and did not worship the gods 
of the Egyptians. But they were poor and igno- 
rant, and had no great teacher or leader, and no one 
to protect them from the cruelty of the Egyptians. 
At last God raised up for them a leader, who was 
one of the greatest men who ever lived. This man 
was Moses, who became their teacher and guide. 
He led them out from this land in which they were 
slaves to the cruel king, back to the land from which 
their fathers had come, years before. 

The story of the Hebrews leaving Egypt is told 

135 



I36 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

in the second book of the Old Testament. This 
book is called Exodus, because this word means a 
going out. When a number of people rush out of a 
room, we sometimes say : " What an exodus ! " 

We do not know who wrote this interesting book, 
or the next three books which come after it, which 
tell us the story of Moses' life and the laws which 
he gave to the Hebrew people. Probably Moses 
himself wrote part of them. 

I suppose you all know the story of Moses in the 
bulrushes. You know how the poor Hebrew mother 
did not dare keep her baby with her, and so when 
he was a few months old, she put him into a little 
basket which was water-tight, and let him float in 
the river among the tall grasses. You know the 
story of how the king's daughter found him and 
brought him up as if he were her own little boy. 
Instead of living in a poor, little hut, he was brought 
up in a great palace. Many boys would have been 
spoiled by such a life. They would have been 
ashamed of belonging to a poor, despised race. But 
though Moses lived like a prince, he never forgot 
the poor Hebrews, and not all the fine, rich things 
which he saw about him could make him forget the 
selfishness of the men who were abusing his people. 

He learned many things at the court of the king, 
and what he learned he kept in his mind until the 
time when he obeyed God's call to go to the king, 
Pharaoh, and ask him to let the Hebrew people go» 



MOSES. 137 

When I say God called him, you must remember 
that whenever the Bible writers speak of God's 
voice, or of His saying any thing to them, it was 
probably, simply the Spirit of God speaking through 
their own minds. 

The stories which have come down to us contain 
very astonishing accounts of Moses' efforts to make 
Pharaoh promise to let the people go. Exactly what 
did really happen I suppose we shall never know. 
The writer of the account, whoever he was, thought 
that God hardened Pharaoh's heart and made him 
wicked. But we know this could not have been 
so ; as another writer in the Bible said, many years 
later : " Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am 
tempted of God, for He tempteth no man." 

We read in the story of Moses that he brought 
down many dreadful curses upon the Egyptians, 
when, as it appears, their king was chiefly to blame. 
This seems unjust, and we know that God could not 
have commanded any thing which was unjust or 
cruel. 

In old times, and even now in some countries, 
children are punished for their father's sins. We 
find in many of the Hebrew stories that Moses and 
other great leaders commanded many innocent peo- 
ple to be put to death, and thought that this was 
God's will. If they had known more about God, 
they would not have thought so. They thought as 
Abraham did, that God was very much like a great 



I38 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

man who could get angry and would kill his ene- 
mies, just as a king might do. They thought he 
cared only for the Hebrews ; they did not know that 
He was the God of the whole world, and loved the 
Egyptians and all other nations too. It took many 
hundred years for them to come to see that great 
truth. Not until Jesus came did the world besrin to 

o 

learn that all people are born with the same birth- 
right, and can all become God's children. 

But although Moses knew less than many men 
not so great as he, who were fortunate enough to 
live later, when the world was wiser, yet he knew 
vastly more than any other man of his time. 

After the Egyptian king had at last let the people 
go, and they had started off on their long, tiresome 
journey, I suppose Moses must have felt almost 
crushed by the great care which rested on him. 
The Hebrews were a hard people to manage, and 
Moses felt that he must make some laws for them 
to live in an orderly, quiet way. They often got 
into disputes and needed some one to settle their 
quarrels, so Moses very wisely separated all the 
men, women, and children into different divisions 
and chose a judge for each one; in this way he 
gained time for himself to give to more important 
things. 




CHAPTER XXIII. 



THE TEN WORDS. 



AFTER the Hebrews in their wanderings had 
come to a lofty mountain named Sinai, they 
rested there, and Moses left them in the valley and 
went alone up the rugged mountain side. His mind 
was full of many things, and he wanted to have time 
to think and learn what he ought to do. 

I can imagine how the brave old man must have 
looked as, with his head bowed on his hands, he sat 
high up on the rocky cliffs. Beneath him were the 
drifting clouds, and when they parted, he could look 
down and see far away in the valley the great camp 
with its thousands of tents. He saw the hosts of 
people whom he had led out of slavery, and his heart 
ached as he thought of their ignorance and wicked- 
ness, and of how he alone must guide and teach them. 
But he trusted in his God and his courage did not fail. 

The night came on, and as he lay down alone in the 
silence under the stars, no doubt he thought of all his 
strange, past life from his childhood in the palace, to 
his old age in the desert ; and the grand, sweet thought 

139 



140 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

came to hiin, as it had come before, that the great Un- 
seen Power, which had guided him so far, was with 
him and in him, and nust speak through him. 

He thought of the Egyptian gods which he had 
seen carved out of stone by men's hands. He knew 
the Hebrews had seen these all their lives, aud that 
they would be tempted to make gods like them. He 
knew it w^as hard for them to think of a God who 
could not be seen, and he thought that, first and most 
important of all, he must write a law for his people 
which should forbid their ever trying to make an 
imaoce of their God. 

So, before going down from the mountain, upon a 
block of stone he cut in Hebrew letters the first law, 
which put into English reads in these words : 

" Tliou sJialt have vone other gods before me" 

Then came the second law, which means very much 
the same as the first one : 

" Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven [that is a 
carved] image nor the likeness of any form that is in 
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is 
in the watc* : rider the earth ; thou shalt not bow down 
thyself unto them nor serve them; for I, the Lord 
thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity [that 
is the sins] of the fathers upon the children unto the 
third and fourth generation of them that hate me ; 
and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love 
me and keep my commandments? 

Nothing could have been truer or better for Moses 



THE TEN WORDS. 141 

to tell his people than this. If grown people are 
ignorant and wicked, their children, and grandchil- 
dren, and great-grandchildren will probably be either 
lazy, or ill, or wicked, and will suffer the consequen- 
ces of their fathers being bad men. But, on the 
other hand, if their parents are wise and good, the 
children are almost sure to grow up happy and well 
and with a liking for good things. 

The third commandment which Moses wrote, was 
to teach his people not to swear or use the name of 
God carelessly. It was this : 

" Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God 
in vain : for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that 
taketh his name in vain" 

The fourth law was about keeping one day in seven 
for the service of God. 

" Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Six 
days shalt thon labor and do all thy work / but the 
seventh day is a sabbath unto the Lord thy God ; in 
it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor 
thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, 
nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy 
gates ; for in six days the Lord made heaven and 
earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the 
seventh day ; luherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath 
day and hallotved it? 

The setting apart one day in seven was probably 
not a wholly new thing. It is thought that some 
other ancient people had this custom. 



142 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Nothing could have been wiser than to teach 
those people to turn aside from their work, and rest 
and think about higher things as often as once a 
week. They had no Bibles, they could not have read 
them if they had them, and they would have quite 
forgotten about God if this one day in seven had 
not been set apart for them. Although we have the 
Bible and many good books to read during the week, 
we too need it and cannot do without it in this busy 
world where men and women get so little rest and 
think so little about the best things. 

I hope that all the children who read this will 
always find Sunday the best and brightest day of 
the whole week, even if the playthings are put away. 
If Moses had lived in our time, and known more 
about God, and that He is never tired and never 
rests, and if he had known more about how God 
made the world, he would have given a different 
reason to the Hebrews for keeping a day of rest. 
The true reason for keeping it, of course, is that we 
need it and cannot do without it. 

The fifth law was one of the most important for 
us all to remember. Among all the ten laws there 
is not one so important for little American boys and 
girls to think of as this : 

" Honor thy father and mother that thy days may 
be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth 
thee: 1 

It is true that people who obey the wise teachings 



THE TEN WORDS. 1 43 

of their fathers and mothers, as a general thing, live 
longer than those who do not ; but this is not the 
best reason for honoring them. We should obey 
this law because it is right. To be disrespectful to 
a good and kind father and mother is one of the 
worst things a child can do. 

The other laws are easy to understand ; they 
taught the people not to kill, not to be impure, not 
to steal, nor tell lies about their neighbors, nor to 
covet any thing that belonged to their neighbor. 

They are : 

" Thou slialt do no murder. 

" Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

" Thou shalt not steal. 

" Thou shalt not hear false witness against thy 
neighbor. 

" Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors house, thou 
shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man- 
servant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, 
nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." 

These ten commandments, or " words," as they 
were called, have, I suppose, become the most famous 
laws ever written. Surely no one in that age who 
had not been guided and taught by God could have 
written them. 

As the great mountain Sinai rose up high above 
the plain, so did the thoughts of this man, inspired 
of God, rise high above those of the simple, ignorant 
people, who, even while he was writing these very 



144 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 



words, were making for themselves a golden image of 
a calf, and falling down before it as they had seen 
the Egyptians do. 

If a wise man were writing ten laws for the Amer- 
icans, he perhaps would write something a little 
different. He would not say so much as Moses did 
against carving idols, for we are in no danger of 
doing that ; but I think he would be sure to say 
that we must not care for riches and pleasure so 
much as to make us think less about God ; and he 
would say that above all things we must always 
speak the truth, and be unselfish. 

At another time, however, Moses did give a com- 
mandment which means much the same. It was 
this : " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE LAWS OF THE HEBKEWS. 

WE read in the story of the travels of the 
Hebrew people that they made, at Moses' 
command, a large, beautiful tent. This tent was 
called the Tabernacle, and was so made that it could 
be put together and taken to pieces very easily, and 
thus be carried on the journey. On the outside of 
this Tabernacle was a curtain of goatskin, and on 
the inside were ten embroidered curtains of blue, 
and purple, and scarlet fastened to each other by 
clasps of gold. 

Within the Tabernacle were kept the most pre- 
cious things which the Hebrew priests used in their 
religious services. 

Among these were two altars made of brass, and 
a candlestick, and dishes, and spoons made of gold. 
But the most important of all was a beautiful chest 
of gold called the " ark." Within this were placed 
the ten commandments which Moses had written on 
the two stone slabs. Above the ark, on what was 
called the " mercy-seat," were two golden angels 

145 



146 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

with wings outstretched as if they were covering 
and protecting the precious contents of the chest. 

In the book of the Exodus we find a very long 
and careful description of every part of the Tab- 
ernacle and every thing that was in it. In all these 
matters Moses borrowed many ideas from the 
Egyptians, taking only what was good and leaving 
out what was wrong and harmful. 

In old times it was generally the custom for a 
young man to work at the same business which his 
father had. In Egypt this had been the custom; 
the son of a soldier was usually a soldier, and the 
son of a priest was a priest. We should think it 
unwise and even wrong to force every minister's 
son to be a minister, for some sons would not be 
good enough nor know enough for that. But among 
the ancient peoples the priests did not preach and 
were not much like our ministers, so it was quite a 
different thing when every priest's son became a 
priest. 

The business of the priests was chiefly to attend 
to the sacrifices and to study the laws which were 
written which told them how to perform their du- 
ties. 

Moses and his brother Aaron were sons of a man 
who belonged to the descendants of one of Israel's 
sons, named Levi. All the descendants of each son 
formed a separate tribe by themselves. Those de- 
scended from Levi were called the Levites. Moses 



I48 GREAT THOUGHTS TOT LITTLE THINKERS. 

cliose Lis brother Aaron and his sons and their de- 
scendants to be priests forever to the Hebrew 
people. 

The next book in the Bible, after the Book of 
Exodus, is called Leviticus, and contains the laws 
which the priests were to observe and teach. 

Some of these laws are very curious, and are some- 
what like the religious laws which we find in cer- 
tain heathen countries to which we now send Chris- 
tian missionaries. They have a great deal to say 
about cleanness and uncleanness. Unclean does not 
mean soiled, as you would suppose it did. Auy one 
who ate of certain animals which were forbidden 
food, or who touched an animal that had died, or 
any one who had certain sicknesses, was called " un- 
clean." Most of the animals and birds which the 
Hebrews were told not to eat are those which we 
ourselves do not like to eat, such as the cat and 
dog, and many others that have paws. But some 
things, like pork, bear meat, lobsters, oysters, and 
clams, which we eat, were forbidden to them. 

Many of the Hebrew laws would not be fitted for 
civilized people like ourselves, but were very useful 
in teaching these ignorant, wild people to be clean, 
and decent, and orderly. They had seen all kinds 
of shameful sins among the Egyptians and other 
heathen nations, and Moses with wonderful wisdom 
tried to teach them to keep their bodies clean, and 
their hearts and minds pure. 



THE LA W.S OF THE HE BEE WS. 1 49 

Like all other nations, the Hebrews offered sacri- 
fices and offerings to their God, whom they called Je- 
hovah. These sacrifices were generally of lambs or 
goats, or of cattle. Sometimes if a man had touched 
a dead animal and thus made himself " unclean," 
or had done any thing that was wrong, and he wanted 
the priest to make what was called a " guilt offering," 
he brought some young pigeons, or, if he could not 
afford that, some fine flour. The priest would kill 
the birds and burn their bodies on the altar, or else 
burn a handful of the flour, and then the man would 
feel that this was a sio;n that he had atoned for the 
wrong and was forgiven. 

The people were taught to always bring the best 
that they had for an offering to Jehovah. If they 
brought a lamb or a goat, it must always be a per- 
fect one, never an old or lame one. 

There were many different kinds of offerings : they 
were called peace offerings, heave offerings, wave 
offerings, meal offerings, sin and burnt offerings. 
Probably the common people understood very little 
of what it all meant. But they must have felt very 
solemn as they saw the priest come out from under 
the curtains of the Tabernacle, where they were 
never allowed to enter. They saw him in his linen 
robes stand before the altar and place the flesh of 
the animals on the fire, which was never allowed to 
go out. They saw the smoke rise up through the 
still air into the blue skA^, and they must have felt a 



150 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

strange fear and wonder as they thought of the great 
unseen God to whom this sacrifice was offered. 

The people were taught that if they broke the law, 
they were often just as guilty if they did not intend 
to do it, as if they had meant to. We still find this 
notion among many heathen people, but the Jews 
themselves, as time went on and they came to know 
more about God, saw that he who means to do 
wrong is a thousand times more wicked than the 
man who does wrong by mistake. 

A great many kinds of wrong-doing were pun- 
ished by death. The children were taught to be 
very respectful to their parents, and any man who 
cursed his father or mother was put to death. The 
commonest way to do this was to take them outside 
the camp and stone them to death. 

Some of the things which Moses commanded seem 
very cruel and dreadful to us. We read that Jeho- 
vah commanded Moses to tell the people to stone a 
man to death because he gathered sticks on the Sab- 
bath day, and there are many stories of God's com- 
manding women and little children to be put to 
death because their fathers had done wrong. But I 
need not tell you again that this was Moses' com- 
mand, not God's. In all these commands Moses did 
only what he thought was right. Most of his laws 
were far wiser and nobler than any that had up to 
that time ever been known anywhere in the world, 
and the only wonder is that he made so few mistakes. 



THE LAWS OF THE HEBREWS. 1 5 I 

Moses was called the meekest of all men. In 
spite of being so wise, and such a great leader, he 
was never proud and selfish, but was always glad 
when other people could do as well as he. A great 
many wonderful stories have come down to us about 
Moses, but I do not know of any story which shows 
how noble and sweet this old man was better than 
this one which I will tell you. 

One day two men in the camp of the Hebrews 
began to prophesy as Moses had done, and a young 
man who thought Moses would not like it came and 
told him about it. Another man named Joshua, 
who afterwards became a great general, said : " My 
lord Moses, forbid them." But Moses, not thinking 
of himself first, but caring more than all besides for 
God's glory, said : " Art thou jealous for my sake ? 
Would God that all Jehovah's people were prophets, 
that Jehovah would put his spirit upon them ! " He 
Avould have been willing to become the very least 
among them all, if any one else could have led the 
people better than he. 



y^^r^^ 




CHAPTER XXV. 

THE PROMISED LAND. 

AFTER the twelve tribes of Israel had wandered 
many years, and Moses had become very old 
and felt that he should soon die, he called the people 
together and talked to them. He told them that 
God was going to lead them into the land of Canaan, 
where Jacob had lived before he and his sons went 
down into Egypt. He knew that many of the older 
ones had died, and many of the young people had 
been born since they had left Egypt, and he was 
afraid that they would not remember how cruelly 
they had suffered, and how God had delivered them 
and guided them. So he talked to the people very 
seriously, and told them just how they ought to live 
when they got back to the land of their fathers. 

Moses was above all things afraid that they would 
soon forget to pray to the true God whom they 
could not see, and would make images of Him and 
worship them as the people did in Egypt and in the 
country to which they were going. Over and over 
again he warned them against this, and told them 



THE PROMISED LAND. 1 53 

that if they would follow the true God, and would 
not marry heathen women, nor have any thing to do 
with the heathen, God would bless them and make 
them happy and rich, and give them long lives. 
But if they should forget Him and bow down to 
idols, He would curse, and kill, and destroy them, 
and scatter them all over the face of the earth. He 
was so afraid they would mix with heathen people 
that he told them to drive out the heathen from the 
land into which they were going, and to take it for 
themselves. 

He told the fathers to teach the children the law 
of God, and to tell them over and over again their 
wonderful history, for He had chosen them out from 
all other nations to be His own special people. 

Last of all, the old man said with earnest voice, as 
he looked upon those whom he had so loved, and 
whom he must now leave : " I call heaven and earth 
to witness against you this day, that I have set be- 
fore thee life and death, the blessing and the curse ; 
therefore choose life, that thou mayst live ; . . . 
to love Jehovah thy God, to obey His voice, and to 
cling unto Him ; for He is thy life." 

After Moses had done speaking to the people, he 
went alone up on a mountain, from which he could 
look over into the Promised Land and see where his 
people were to go, and there he died. 

After Moses 1 death a great general, named Joshua, 
became the leader of the Hebrews. He was not so 



154 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

great nor wise a man as Moses, but he was " strong 
and of good courage," and helped the people drive 
out the nations who lived in the land of Canaan. 
There were many tribes of them, just as there were 
many tribes of the Hebrews. The stories of the 
wars between them and the Hebrews are told in the 
book called Joshua. We see that like all other wars 
of ancient times, they were very cruel and dreadful, 
and the soldiers not only killed the men, but also the 
helpless women and children who did not fight. In 
our times, though wars are still very dreadful and 
cruel, no soldier thinks of hurting a woman or child. 

Joshua thought it quite right to fight in this way, 
for he supposed that it was God's will. After his 
men had killed or driven away most of the nations 
who held the land which they wanted, he divided it 
among the twelve different tribes of Israel. The 
men of the tribe of Levi, who were not to be sol- 
diers or farmers like the others, but priests, were 
given " forty-eight cities," the story says. Probably 
they were very small ones, no larger than little vil- 
lages. Besides these cities for the Levites, we read 
of there being what were called " cities of refuge." 

In old times, when there were no courts of justice 
such as we have, if a man killed another, the nearest 
of kin to the murdered man felt it his duty to follow 
and find the' murderer and kill him. Sometimes a 
man killed another by accident, when he did not 
mean to, and in order that he might escape from the 



THE PROMISED LAND. 155 

relatives of him who had been killed, Joshua allowed 
such men to fly to the " cities of refuge," where they 
would be safe. 

The new country into which the Israelites came 
was very different from Egypt. It was much 
smaller, and the climate was cooler. On the west 
side of it was the great sea. On the south, was the 
country through which they had travelled on their 
way from Egypt. Away off to the northeast were 
the great nations from which Abraham, the father 
of their race, had come. The Jordan, which was the 
most important river, flowed through the middle of 
the country, and emptied its waters into a wonderful 
salt sea which is called the Dead Sea. The water is 
much Salter than that of the ocean, and no fish can 
live in it. The river Jordan was not at all like the 
Nile. It did not overflow its banks, and it was very 
much smaller than the broad river of Egypt which 
bore great vessels on its waters. 

In this land of Canaan to which the Hebrews had 
come, there were no fine palaces, and temples, and 
pyramids, no great, sandy desert, and cloudless sky, 
such as their fathers had seen in Egypt. 

Here were mountains and green hills covered with 
cedar trees. Here were groves of olive trees, and 
clear running brooks, and little plains and meadows. 
It was a beautiful country, and the Hebrews came 
to love it very dearly. I suppose no people in all 
the world ever grew to love their own land and race 



156 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

as these children of Israel did. They felt they were 
better and purer than any other nation, and that 
God would especially bless them. So the land that 
He had given them, and in which their father 
Abraham was buried, became very dear to them. 
They had brought the bones of Joseph out of Egypt 
with them, and they buried them here in the land 
where he had been born. 




CHAPTER XXVI. 

JCJDGES. 

THE next of the Hebrew books, after the book 
of Joshua, is called Judges. This tells us 
about what the Israelites did after the death of their 
great general Joshua. 

The people had no king and no great leader, but 
they had judges who settled their disputes. 

There are several interesting stories in this book, 
though most of them are not very important for you 
to know. 

One of these is about a brave soldier named Jeph- 
tha, who made a solemn promise, or vow, as it was 
called, that if Jehovah would help him to beat the 
enemy in battle, when he returned home he would 
offer up as a sacrifice the first thing that came out 
of his house to meet him. I suppose he never 
thought what a terribly foolish and thoughtless 
thing this was for him to promise. Probably he 
thought it might be only a cow or a goat that he 
should first see. 

But as he came back from the battle, where he 

157 



158 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

had beaten the enemy, whom should he see but his 
only child, his fair young daughter, come out with 
her girl friends to meet him singing and dancing to 
welcome him home. When the poor father saw 
that, he tore his clothes and cried out in agony. 
Then he told her of his vow, and that he had prom- 
ised it to Jehovah and could not take it back. Wo- 
men were sometimes allowed to break their vows, 
but Moses had commanded that every man should 
perform whatever he had vowed to Jehovah. So 
she bade him do as he had promised, and Jephtha, 
not knowing that God would not want him to keep 
such a dreadful vow, sacrificed his dear child. 

This story gives us a little idea of that strange life 
of those ancient people of whom we know so little. 
We read among the stories of the Greeks of a king 
who sacrificed his dear young daughter, believing 
that the gods required this terrible thing of him. 

The strangest stories in the book of Judges are 
about a strong man named Samson, who, it is said, 
killed a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, 
and did many other things just as remarkable. The 
stories of Samson which the Hebrews told, make us 
think of Hercules, the strong man of whom the 
Greeks told many famous stories. 

One of the prettiest of all the stories of this time 
of the Judges is about a poor young widow named 
Ruth. Only two books in the Bible are named 
after women, and one of these is named after her. 



JUDGES. 159 

The first really great man of whom we read after 
the time of Joshua was a prophet named Samuel. 

I wonder if you know what a prophet means. 
As we go on through the books of the Hebrews, Ave 
shall find a great deal said about prophets, so we 
may as well stop here and learn a little about them. 

Perhaps you think a prophet is a wise man who 
can tell what is going to happen in the future. It is 
true that many of the prophets being wise men and 
knowing much more than the common people, did 
tell many things which afterwards came to pass, but 
this was one of the least important things which 
they did. Sometimes there were false prophets, but 
the true prophets were men of God who spoke His 
truth to the people, and preached to them and 
taught them. 

Sometimes we meet persons nowadays who tell 
things which afterwards come to pass in a wonder- 
ful way. These people are sometimes wise men who 
carefully study the signs of the times ; sometimes 
they are common men who make shrewd guesses, 
but Ave can hardly call them prophets. The chief 
work of the Hebrew prophets Avas to arouse their 
nation from its sins and to be great religious teachers. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE OLD PEOPHET AND THE YOUNG KING. 

THE two books of the Hebrews which are called 
Samuel tell us a great deal about the prophet 
for whom the books are named. 

I suppose if you know any Bible stories at all, you 
know about the little Hebrew boy, Samuel, who lived 
with the old priest Eli, in the temple of Shiloh, and 
whose mother came once a year and brought him a 
little coat. Perhaps you have seen some little mar- 
ble or plaster statues of a child kneeling in prayer, 
which is called " Samuel Praying." I have seen 
such, many times in the stores, for the story of 
the good little Samuel to whom God spoke, is very 
well known. 

We read that the ark of God, the golden chest 
which Moses had made, was taken away from the 
Israelites by the heathen tribes of Philistines. The 
neighboring tribes had not all been driven out of 
their land, and for many years they were at war 
with the Hebrews. When the old priest, Eli, heard 
of this, it broke his heart, and he fell down and died. 

1 60 



THE OLD PROPHET AND THE YOUNG KING. l6l 

After the ark had been carried away, it was not 
brought back for many years, and the people began 
to forget about God, and to make idols like the 
heathen around them. 

Samuel grew up to be a man, and being the great 
prophet that he was, he saw the sin of the people 
and tried to wake them up to the knowledge of it. He 
led them back to serve the true God, and he went 
around from one part of the country to the other, 
judging the people, settling their disputes, and teach- 
ing them what to do. 

After a while the Hebrews thought they would 
like a king to lead and guide them. Samuel was 
now an old man ; when the people came and said 
they wanted a king, he told them he did not think it 
was a good plan. He said a king would not let them 
have their own way. If they had a king they would 
have to pay him money and become his servants. 

But the people would not listen to Samuel. They 
had never had a king, and they thought they would 
like one, for he would help to unite the twelve differ- 
ent tribes together so that they could fight their ene- 
mies better. 

So at last Samuel felt that it was God's will, and 
he appointed a handsome young man, named Saul, to 
be their king. That is, he poured oil on his head, 
which was the ancient way of showing that a man 
was to be king. Saul was a tall man, a head and 
shoulders taller than other men, and looked like a 
king. 



1 62 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

The Philistines again attacked the people, and Saul 
led them into battle and was so strong and brave 
himself, that he gave courage to his men and drove 
back the enemy. Although Saul was a king, he lived 
a simple life, very different from the great kings of 
Egypt of whom I told you. The people were still 
poor, and had no great palaces or temples. There 
was not even a blacksmith in all the country, so when 
the Israelites wanted to sharpen their axes or spears 
they had to go to the blacksmiths among the Philis- 
tines. 

Samuel had been very sorry to have the Hebrews 
choose a king. He was sorry also to find that though 
Saul was a brave soldier, he was not always wise 
and good, and was not the best leader for the 
people. 

Samuel felt that a wiser man ought to be chosen 
to take his place, but he was afraid of Saul and did 
not 'dare to let him know about it. So he went to 
the little town of Bethlehem, where lived a man 
named Jesse, who had seven sons. The people were 
afraid when they saw him come, for he was a wise 
old man and had been their judge, and I suppose he 
must have been a stern man, who had a great power 
over the minds of the poor ignorant people. He 
told them not to be afraid, for he came peaceably, 
and was going to offer sacrifice there. After the 
sacrifice, he asked Jesse to let him see his sons, and 
when he showed Samuel his youngest son, named 



THE OLD PROPHET AND THE YOUNG KING. 1 63 

David, the old prophet knew that this was the one 
whom he was to anoint king over Israel. David 
was a rosy-cheeked lad who had been called in 
from the pasture, where he was taking care of 
his sheep, in order to see the great prophet who 
had asked for him. 

It must have seemed very strange to him, the 
youngest of all the brothers, to be chosen for this 
high honor. I suppose he did not understand it 
clearly and hardly knew what it meant. 

Now Saul was not happy, and sometimes he felt 
very gloomy and hateful, and made his friends and 
servants afraid of him. They thought it would be 
a good plan to find some one who could make pleas- 
ant music and please the king when he was sad and 
ill-tempered. So they sent for David, who knew 
how to play very sweetly on the harp. The harp 
which David had was much smaller than those 
which are used now, and I do not suppose that the 
music was any thing which we should enjoy very 
much. 

In old times people knew very little about music. 
Long after the time when the most beautiful 
churches, and pictures, and statues had been made, 
and the best poetry written, came the knowledge of 
beautiful music. So, in ancient times, we must not 
think of there being any music like that which we 
enjoy. But whatever they had, they liked perhaps 
as much as we like our music, and when the bright- 



164 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

faced lad took his harp and struck the strings, the 
king's face would brighten and his heart grow light, 
and the sadness would disappear. 

There is one story about David which I suppose 
you all know, so I shall not tell it ; I mean the story 
of his killing the giant, Goliath, by a little pebble 
thrown from his sling. 

All the people were so glad to have this great 
giant killed, that they sang praises and did great 
honor to the young man. But this made Saul jeal- 
ous. You see he was selfish, and wanted to be first, 
and to receive the most praise. 

We do not have to look far to find people who 
are just like Saul, and there are few things so un- 
lovely as this bitter jealousy, which makes one al- 
ways want to dress the best, to be the first in the 
games, and to take no pleasure in seeing others have 
the best things. 

But there was one noble young man who was not 
jealous, and who loved David as he loved his own 
life. This was Jonathan, the son of the king. The 
young prince gave the shepherd lad his own robe 
and every thing that he wore, even his sword. 
These two young men loved each other so much, 
that down to this day when we see two men who 
would do any thing, even die for each other, we say 
their love is " like the love of David and Jonathan." 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



KINO DATED. 



OF all the great men whom the Hebrews hon- 
ored, no name except those of Abraham and 
Moses, was so dear as that of DaTid, the man who 
was a shepherd, a soldier, a king, a prophet, and a 
poet. 

You heard how King Sanl began to be jealous of 
this braTe young man whom the people praised. 
One day, when David was playing on his harp be- 
fore the Mng, Saul became Tery angry and threw 
his spear at him, meaning to kill him. But Da\ T id 
ran away and saved his life. 

DaTid had married Saul's daughter, the Princess 
Michal, who loTed him Tery much ; when Saul sent 
to her house to find David and kill him, she put an 
image in the bed so that the king's servants should 
think that David was there, and then she secretly 
helped her husband to get down out of the window 
at night and escape from her father. 

For a very long time after this, DaTid did not 
dare to go near the king, though his friend, the good 

165 



1 66 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Prince Jonathan, tried to get his father to treat 
David kindly ; for, as the writer of the story says, 
Jonathan loved David " as he loved his own soul." 

But Saul became angry at Jonathan also, and 
threw his spear at his own son. So Jonathan knew 
that Saul really meant to kill David, and he sadly 
left the king's house and went out into a field where 
David was hiding, and told him. They knew then 
that they must part, perhaps forever, and bursting 
into tears, the two friends kissed each other many 
times and said a sad good-bye. Jonathan went back 
to his father, and David fled from his own land and 
people, and lived with another king far away. 

For a long time David lived the life of a soldier, 
fighting sometimes against the Philistines, and some- 
times against Saul and his men who were trying to 
find him and kill him. 

David and the men who followed him once went 
into a large, dark cave, and were hidden at the 
farther end of it, when they saw Saul enter and lie 
down to sleep. If David had wished to kill him, 
then would have been the time ; but instead of kill- 
ing his enemy, as he might easily have done, David 
quietly cut off a large piece of Saul's robe, and when 
Saul had awakened and gone out, David went after 
him and called, " My lord, the king." The king turned 
and looked and saw the very man for whom he was 
searching. 

When Saul heard how respectfully and kindly he 



KING DAVID. 167 

spoke, and saw that David could have killed him 
and yet had not done so, his eyes filled with tears, 
and he was sorry and ashamed. He was honest 
enough to say so too. " You are better than I," he 
said ; " you have returned good to me, while I did 
harm you. Now I know that you shall be king. 
Promise me therefore that you will not kill my chil- 
dren after me nor destroy my name." So David 
promised, and Saul returned home. 

But as the time went on Saul again became angry 
against David and came with three thousand men to 
find him. 

One night, when Saul was lying asleep in the camp, 
David came and took away the spear which Saul 
had stuck into the ground at his head. Then he 
went quietly away until he was at a great distance, 
when he called to the king. When Saul waked, 
and found a second time that David had been near 
enough to kill him, and had spared his life, he was 
again much ashamed and said : " See, I have acted 
like a fool, and done very wrong." So he blessed 
David and returned home. 

Saul had little peace ; he was almost always at 
war, and at last, in a great battle with the Philis- 
tines, his son Jonathan was killed, and Saul himself, 
seeing that he could not escape, told the man who 
carried his shield to draw his sword and kill him. 
The armor-bearer was afraid to do this, so Saul him- 
self fell upon his own sword and died. Many men 



1 68 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

were killed in this terrible battle, and the Israelites 
were beaten by the Philistines. 

When David heard that the king and Jonathan 
were dead, he was very sad, and tore his garments, 
and mourned with tears and sighs. 

I told you that David was a poet as well as a 
soldier, and here is a part of a poem which he com- 
posed on the death of the king and his dear friend : 

" Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, 
And in their death were not divided ; 
They were swifter than eagles, 
They were stronger than lions. 

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle ! 
I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan, 
Thy love to me was wonderful, 
Passing the love of women." 

Perhaps this does not seem to you very much like 
poetry, for you notice that the words at the end of 
the lines do not sound alike, as they do in verses like 

this. 

" Twinkle, twinkle, little star 
How I wonder what you are." 

You will find that the poetry of the Hebrews and 
Greeks and other ancient nations never had the ends 
of the lines sound alike as we have in our poetry. 

There have never been aoy poems written more 
beautiful than some of the poems of David, and 
when you come to understand about them you will 
like them very much. 

For some time after SauPs death there was a 
great deal of trouble before it was decided who 



KING DAVID. 169 

should be king, but at last it was settled that David 
should be the ruler. Theu began a new order of 
things, for David was a very different man from 
Saul. He remembered his promise to the king, and 
instead of treating Saul's family unkindly, he did all 
that he could for them. Only one was left alive, and 
he was lame. David sent for him, and took him into 
his own house, and treated him as his own son. 

Up to the time of David, the famous old City of 
Jerusalem had not belonged to the Israelites, 
but to the neighboring people. David fought 
against them and took the city, and after that it 
was often called the " City of David." He got 
masons and carpenters, who built him a fine house 
in Jerusalem, in which he lived with his large fam- 
ily of wives and children and servants. 

In fifteen years he had grown from the wild shep- 
herd boy to be the great king of his people. He 
sent and brought the ark with the gold angels bend- 
ing over it, and had it carried up into the city. 

As the priests came, carrying the precious ark on 
their shoulders, the trumpets sounded, the people 
clapped their hands and danced and shouted, and 
King David himself, dressed in a white linen robe, 
took his harp in his hand and danced and sang and 
led his people on. It was a glorious day for Jerusa- 
lem, and perhaps the happiest one in all the life of 
the king ; the ark was placed in the tent which had 
been made for it ; and David himself, as the priest, 
offered sacrifices to Jehovah and blessed his people. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



david's troubles. 



ALTHOUGH David was a great and good man 
he did one very terrible and wicked thing. 
He had a faithful soldier who had something which 
David very much wanted, and it was not possible 
for him to get it until after the soldier was dead. 
The more King David thought about it, the more 
he selfishly meant to have his own way and get what 
he wanted. He did not wish to kill the man openly 
and have the matter talked about, so he gave orders 
to have him put near the front when they were 
fighting, so that he would be sure to be shot by the 
arrows of the enemy. The general did as David 
told him to do, and the poor soldier fell in battle 
as the kins: meant to have him. 

But this sin could not be hidden, and the news 
of it came to a good prophet, named Nathan, who 
felt that he must go to the king and speak to him 
about it. 

So Nathan went to the king and told him a little 
story, which was this : There were two men in one 

170 



DAVID'S TROUBLES. 171 

city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man 
had many flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, but 
the poor man had nothing except one little lamb 
which grew up with him and his children, and 
drank out of his own cup, and lay in his arms and 
was very dear to him. And there came a traveller 
unto the rich man, and he would not take one of his 
own sheep to give to the stranger for dinner, but he 
took the poor man's lamb and killed it and gave a 
dinner to the man who was his guest. When 
David heard of this mean and cruel act he was very 
angry and said : " As Jehovah liveth, the man that 
has done this thing shall surely die, and he shall 
give back four lambs, because he did this thing and 
had no pity." Then the prophet, looking sternly 
and sadly at his master, the king, said: "Thou art 
the man." The king's eye fell, and he hung his 
head in shame and sorrow when he heard the 
words of the prophet, and said : " I have sinned 
against Jehovah." 

One of the books of the Bible is called the 
Psalms. The Psalms were poems and hymns which 
were written by different men among the Hebrews 
during the course of several hundred years. Many 
of them were written by David. Some of these 
are the saddest words ever written, and show us how 
miserable and wretched David felt after he had 
done wrong. In the fifty-first Psalm, he tells of his 
sin and cries out to God to forgive him : 



I ?2 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

" Wash mc thoroughly, 
And cleanse me from my sin. 
My sin is ever before mc. 
Against thee, thee only have I sinned, 
And done that which is evil in thy sight. 
Hide thy face from my sins. 
Deliver mc from blood-guiltiness, O God, thou God of my 

salvation. 
A broken and a contrite heart, 
O God, thou wilt not despise." 

More than twenty-five hundred years have passed 
since the penitent king in the far-off land of the 
Hebrews wrote these sorrowful words ; and millions 
of sinful men and women since then, reading these 
words and feeling the same grief and shame that 
David felt, have taken comfort in knowing what 
David knew, that God will never despise nor turn 
away from any one who is truly sorry. 

It is not possible for you little people to under- 
stand much about the Psalms, until you are older, 
and have, as we say, " more experience " ; until you 
know more about people and things, and find how 
hungry and unsatisfied every soul must be until 
it knows God. 

Most of the Psalms are not sorrowful, but are joy- 
ful and glad, and full of thanksgiving, for they were 
written to be sung in the temple service. It is a 
good plan for every one to learn some of the most 
beautiful Psalms by heart. Every one ought to know 
the twenty-third Psalm, and that other one which 



DAVID'S TROUBLES. 1 73 

begins, " God is our refuge and strength." The first 
of these was written by David, perhaps when he 
himself was a shepherd boy tending his flocks. We 
do not know who wrote the other, but it is one of the 
most beautiful ever written. 

During the last part of David's life, although he 
was king, he was by no means happy, for he had 
much to trouble him. There was a great famine in 
the land, when the people nearly starved ; there were 
a great many wars, and also a terrible pestilence, a 
sickness from which many people died. But besides 
this he had trouble in his own family. One of his 
sons, a young man named Absalom, turned against 
his father, who was now old, and tried to be king in 
his place. 

Absalom was a very handsome man and had pleas- 
ant manners, so many people liked him and joined 
with him against the kin^. David was obliged to 
defend himself and fight the army that his son had 
gathered against him. It was much harder for him 
than to fight against the Philistines, or the other ene- 
mies that he had fought all his life, for he could not 
help loving his son in spite of his being so bad. 

One day David sat between the gates of the city, 
and the watchman on the tower saw two men come 
out of a forest, and run fast towards the town. They 
brought sad news to the king. They told him that 
Absalom had been riding; in the thick woods on his 
mule, and suddenly caught his head in a great oak 



174 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

tree, and was left hanging there in the branches, 
while the mule ran away. 

David had given strict orders to his soldiers, say- 
ing, " Beware that none touch the young man Absa- 
lom " ; but when they saw their enemy hanging there, 
and knew that he was in their power, the temptation 
was too much for them, and ten young men sur- 
rounded the beautiful youth as he hung helplessly 
before them, and killed him. Then they took his 
body and buried it in a great pit in the forest and 
put a heap of stones over it. When the king heard 
this terrible news, his heart was broken, and he burst 
into tears, and wept bitterly, and cried : 

" O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, 
Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my 



son 



When the people heard how the king mourned, 
they no longer felt proud of their victory, but crept 
back into the city as if they were ashamed. 

David had many children. The most famous of. 
these was Solomon, who became king after him. 
David never felt happy to think that the ark of 
God should be kept in a tent while he himself lived 
in a good house, and he wanted very much to build 
a beautiful temple and to place the ark in it; but 
this was not possible for him to do, and he was 
obliged to leave it for his son Solomon to do after 
him. So when David was old, he made Solomon 



DAVID'S TROUBLES. 1 75 

king, in order that the matter should be settled be- 
fore he died, and there should be no quarrelling 
anions; the brothers as to who should be the next 
ruler. 

At last, in a good old age, King David died. Al- 
though his son and many other kings have been 
richer and lived in much more splendor, I do not 
suppose any king in any land has been so loved by 
his nation or has been so dear to the world as was 
David, who from his Psalms was called " The Sweet 
Singer of Israel." 

The three great names of Abraham, Moses, and 
David stand out above all other Hebrew names like 
three mountain peaks that rise far above the plain 
and lift their snowy tops up into the blue sky. 

Although they often did foolish and cruel things 
like the ignorant people of their time, yet they were 
true men who led their nation onward and upward. 
They had great thoughts and insights into truth 
which other men of their time did not have, and 
not only their nation, but the whole world, has been 
made better by them. 




CHAPTER XXX. 



KING SOLOMON". 



SOLOMON was the third king whom the Israel- 
ites had to rule over them. When he was 
anointed king over his people he was only a young 
lad, no older than your big brother who goes to the 
high school. The young king had never been to 
school ; there were no schools for children in those 
days, but he must have had teachers at home who 
had taught him to read and write, though there were 
very few books written at that time, and such a thing 
as a newspaper was not heard of until more than two 
thousand years later. r The young Solomon felt that 
he did not know much, and needed a great deal of 
wisdom to guide him in governing his people. 

One night in a dream he thought that God came 
to him and told him to ask what he should give him. 
So Solomon answered and said : "lamas a little 
child among this great people, give me therefore an 
understanding heart to judge Thy people that I may 
see the difference between good and evil." Then 
God answered and told him that because he had 
asked for wisdom instead of selfishly asking that he 

176 



KING SOLOMON. 177 

might live long or become very rich, wisdom should 
be given him, and riches and honor also. 

There are many stories about the wisdom of Solo- 
mon, which show what very good judgment he had 
in settling all sorts of disputes. 

One of them is about two women who lived to- 
gether, and each had a little new-born baby. Now 
very little babies you know look much alike, and 
one night when one of them died, its mother took it 
and put it in the arms of the other mother who was 
sleeping, and took that mother's living baby for her- 
self. AYhen she woke in the morning she thought the 
dead child was not hers, and the two mothers began 
quarrelling as to who should have the live baby. 

There were no regular judges and courts in those 
days, but all the people came to the king to have 
him settle their disputes ; so these women, bringing 
the live baby, came to Solomon, and as each told a 
different story, it was hard to know which one was 
telling the truth. The king therefore thought that he 
would pretend to kill the child, for he said to himself, 
" The real mother will love it the most, and will cry 
out." So the king gave orders, saying, " Fetch me a 
sword and divide the living child in two, and give half 
to one, and half to the other. 11 Then the woman who 
was the real mother, cried out, and said, " O my 
lord, give her the living child, and in nowise kill it, 11 
but the other said, " No, divide it " ; then the king 
saw who was the true mother and said, " Give her 
the child, and on no account kill it." 



I ?8 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

The report of Solomon's wisdom spread abroad 
into all the neighboring countries, and he was known 
as the wisest man of his time. People sent riddles 
and questions for him to answer. The queen of 
Sheba came to pay him a visit and brought a 
great many servants with her, carrying spices, and 
gold, and precious stones, as a present to the king. 
She had heard wonderful stories of his wisdom and 
riches, but when she saw his splendid palace and his 
magnificence, and heard him answer all the hard 
questions which she asked him, she was overcome 
with surprise and said the half had not been told her. 

The land of the Hebrews at last had peace after 
nearly four hundred years, during which there had 
been a great many wars. Solomon liked to live in 
very fine style ; this was quite unlike the simple life 
of David, his father. He made friends with the king 
of Egypt and of other countries. He sent to them 
and bought gold, silver, brass, ivory, and wood of all 
kinds, oak and cedar, and the beautiful perfumed 
sandal-wood. 

There had never been many horses in his coun- 
try ; the kings had ridden on mules before this, but 
Solomon liked horses, and bought many thousands 
of them. He built great stables and filled them with 
horses and camels and war chariots. There were no 
wagons nor carriages like ours in those days ; the 
only things that went on wheels were rough carts 
and chariots. 



KING SOLOMON. 1 79 

He brought peacocks and monkeys and all sorts 
of new and foreign things into Jerusalem. He 
planted vineyards and built great walled places, 
called " reservoirs," to hold water. He had an im- 
mense family of wives and children and servants, so 
that every day thirty oxen and one hundred sheep 
were killed in order to feed them. He gave splendid 
dinners to his friends, and all the dishes were made 
of gold, for we read that silver was so plenty, it was 
not of much account. 

All this magnificent display was very different 
from any thing that the Hebrews had ever seen be- 
fore, and they were much pleased to see so many 
fine things, and to find strangers coming to their 
country to see their wonderful king. 

Solomon wrote a great many proverbs, and he 
collected those of other wise men ; they are put to- 
gether in a book which is called Proverbs. These 
are not stories, or poems, or histories, like many 
other books of the Bible. They are little, short 
sentences which contain a great deal of good sense. 
Here are a few of them : 

" A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." 
" A soft answer turneth away wrath ; 

But grievous words stir up anger." 
" He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty ; 

And he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city." 

Solomon wrote songs and psalms and many other 
things besides proverbs. He also taught about 



l80 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

plants, flowers, animals, and birds. This was some- 
thing new, for we do not read of any other Hebrew 
who ever did this. Of course, nowadays, we know 
many persons who know a great deal about flowers 
and the habits of animals; but in old times very 
few studied these matters. 

The greatest thing which King Solomon did was 
to carry out the wish of his father David and build 
a temple in which to place the ark of God. It took 
several years to build this, and it was the most beau- 
tiful building which the Hebrews ever had. 

It was built on a hill near the walls of the city. 
It was made partly of stone and partly of wood, and 
was unlike any thing that was ever made before. 

The ark, which had been kept in a tent in the 
city, and the other things which Moses had made, 
were now carried with it up into the great, beauti- 
ful temple. It was a festival day such as was never 
seen before nor since in Jerusalem. 

Thousands and thousands of cattle and sheep 
were killed for the sacrifices, so that some one has 
written that the street ran with blood. Clouds of 
smoke and incense rose from the altars. Every one 
who could crowd into the city came to see the great 
processions, and join in the music and dancing and 
feasting, and in the praise and thanksgiving. 

In the innermost part of the temple was a dark 
chamber like those in the Egyptian temples, only 
there was no figure of a god in it. The walls were 
overlaid with precious gold, and two figures of 



182 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

cherubs with outstretched wings stood, as it were, 
to guard the spot where the ark should be placed. 
Here in the darkness, in the " Holy of Holies," as it 
was called, the ark, after its four hundred years of 
wanderings, found a resting-place. It contained 
only the two slabs of stone on which Moses had 
written the Ten Commandments, but the Hebrews 
had such an awe and reverence for these, that they 
never dared come near or look at them, Only the 
high-priest was allowed to go within this place. 

Solomon, in the presence of all the people, of- 
fered a long prayer to Jehovah, and gave this tem- 
ple which he had built to Him, to be used for His 
worship forever. Then, for a whole week, the peo- 
ple offered sacrifices and feasted and rejoiced in the 
new life which had come to their nation and their 
religion, and prayed that all nations might know 
that Jehovah had done wonders and that He was 
the true God. 

But Solomon, in spite of his wisdom, like many 
other people, did not do as well as he knew how, 
and married many heathen wives, who brought 
their heathen religion with them. To please them 
Solomon built temples for their idols. All this 
was very bad, and led to many other wrong 
things. So we find that the end of this great king 
was a disappointment and a failure. But whatever 
he said that was wise and true, remains wise and true, 
and is good for us, though the wise man who said it 
did not, as we often say," practise what he preached." 



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CHAPTER XXXI. 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 



I MUST now hurry over the events of the next 
few hundred years, and tell you in a few pages 
the main things that will interest little people like 
you. Almost all the books of the Bible which con- 
tain the words of the great Hebrew prophets, cannot 
be understood unless we know about what happened 
to their people during these three or four hundred 
years after the time of the great King Solomon. 

Although the Hebrews were among the smallest 
and weakest of all nations, their history has proba- 
bly been read and studied more than that of any 
other people, because it is so closely connected with 
those truths about God and ourselves which it is 
most important for us to know. If we can break 
through the outer shell of the history which at first 
seems so hard and dry, we shall find a sweet kernel 
within. 

After the time of Solomon the different tribes of 
the Israelites separated from the tribe of Judah 
which was near Jerusalem, and was the one to which 



1 84 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

David had belonged. There were now two king- 
doms. The largest and most important was called 
the kingdom of Israel. It had a new king who did 
not descend from David. The other, which was 
very small indeed, was called the kingdom of Judah, 
and the people were called Jews, for Jew means man 
of Judah. 

These two kingdoms kept quite separate, and did 
not have much to do with each other. There were 
very few good kings in either of them. Many of the 
kings and queens were half heathen, and one king in 
the kingdom of Judah not only worshipped idols, 
but even put them in the court of the temple itself, 
and sacrificed his own children by burning them, ac- 
cording to the cruel heathen custom. 

Of course there were always some good people 
who never forgot the religion of Moses and David, 
and their hearts ached when they saw their beautiful 
temple falling into decay, and knew that the God of 
their fathers was no longer worshipped there. 

At last a good king, named Josiah, began in Jeru- 
salem to reign over the kingdom of Judah. He 
threw down the idols and began to repair the temple. 
One day, when the high-priest was receiving the 
money which the people brought to him to pay the 
carpenters and the builders, a great discovery was 
made. 

A roll of parchment containing the book of the 
law was found, and carried to the king. What the 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 1 85 

book was, or when it had been written, we do not 
know ; but the reading of this book caused intense 
excitement. The king and the people were greatly 
surprised, for they had never before heard of these 
laws. 

When the king saw what was written in the book, 
he tore his clothes, which was the Jewish custom 
when people were in great grief. He felt that Je- 
hovah would be very angry against him and his 
fathers, for they had not kept this law. So he sent 
and called all the priests, and the prophets, and the 
people of Judah together, and read to them all the 
words of the book which he had found ; and he 
made a promise to Jehovah to keep all the command- 
ments that were written in it, and to serve Him with 
all his heart and soul. 

There were many heathen priests in the city who 
worshipped the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and 
burned incense to them. Kin^ Josiah drove these 
all away, and burned their altars and ground them 
into powder, and threw the dust into a brook. He 
destroyed the places where the people had burnt 
their little children as a sacrifice to their gods. He 
even killed the heathen priests whom he found sac- 
rificing at their altars, and he opened the sepulchres, 
which were little rooms cut in the rocky sides of the 
hills in which the dead were buried, and took out 
the bones of the priests who had served idols, and 
burned them. 



150 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS, 

Of course it would have been much better if he 
had taught these poor people about the true God, 
instead of killing them, and certainly it was foolish 
to burn the bones of the dead priests, for after they 
were dead, it could make no difference as to what 
became of their bones. But in all these things 
Josiah did only what other good people of his time 
did, and in fact what many who called themselves 
Christians did two thousand years later. 

This great change which he made was called a 
" Reformation " ; that means a forming over again. 
There have been a great many reformations in the 
history of the world. When every thing gets very 
bad, and people become cruel and wicked, some 
wise man is sure to rise up and tell the world that 
God calls them to begin again and do better. We 
call such a man a reformer, and we must always re- 
member Josiah as a king who was a great reformer. 

The little nation of the Jews lay between two 
great and powerful nations, who were very different 
from them. 

When I say Jews now, I mean not only the people 
of Judah, but all those who were called Hebrews 
and Israelites, for this name Jew came to be given 
not only to one tribe, but to all of them. One of 
these great nations was Egypt. Although some of 
the Hebrew kings had been friends with the 
Egyptians, yet there were a great many wars be- 
tween them, and once an Egyptian king had fought 



158 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

against the city of Jerusalem and taken away the 
beautiful golden shields and the treasures from Solo- 
mon's Temple. 

But the people who lived over on the other side of 
the Hebrews were their greatest enemies. Some of 
these were called Assyrians and others were called 
Babylonians. We have learned a great deal about 
these nations in the last few years by digging in the 
ruins of their great cities. Many books have been 
written about them, and I will tell you more about 
them in another place. 

The Assyrians fought against the city of Samaria, 
which was in the kingdom of Israel. The Israelites 
fought bravely for three years, but inside their 
walled city there was little to eat, and a great sick- 
ness came upon them. War is always a terrible 
thing, but in old times it was much more terrible 
than now. In this dreadful struggle, mothers and 
their little babies were thrown down the rocky cliffs 
and killed. 

The houses were pulled down and every thing was 
destroyed, and the people were carried away pris- 
oners. We do not know what finally became of most 
of these northern tribes of the kingdom of Israel. 
We speak of them now as "The ten lost tribes." 

Only the kingdom of Judah was left, and years 
after, the great king of Babylon came and fought 
against Jerusalem several times. At last he de- 
stroyed this great city of David, which was so dear 



THE TWO KINGDOMS. 



189 



to the Jews. He broke open the sepulchres and 
threw the dead bodies out to be eaten by the 
animals and birds ; he set fire to the temple and the 
palace ; he killed men, women, and children, and 
many whom he did not kill he carried away. This 
was called the Captivity, for a prisoner is a captive. 
The time which they spent in the country of the 
Babylonians to which they were taken, is called the 
"Exile." An exile is one who has to live in a 
foreign land, and is not allowed to go home. In 
some countries men are now exiled if it is found that 
they are not friendly to their own government, and 
it is a great punishment. 




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CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE GREAT HEBREW PROPHETS. 

THE noblest men who ever lived before the 
time of Christ were the great Hebrew 
prophets. They were all of them bold, brave men, 
who dared to say just what they thought was true, 
and to stand up alone against all the people of their 
time. 

Nearly all these great prophets lived during the 
time I have just told you about — that is, between the 
reign of Solomon and the time when the king of 
Babylon carried the Jews away into exile. 

During all these years, as you remember, the 
people in both kingdoms often worshipped idols, 
and sacrificed their own children, and did many 
other wicked and cruel things which Moses forbade 
them to do. Now at one time, in the larger king- 
dom, which you remember was called the kingdom 
of Israel, there was a heathen king named Ahab, 
who had a wife named Jezebel, a cruel, fierce woman. 
All the people worshipped a god called Baal, and 
there was only one man left among the leaders in all 

190 



THE GREAT HEBREW PROPHETS. 191 

the country who stood up bravely and said he would 
not bow his knee to Baal, but would serve Jehovah. 

This was the prophet Elijah, who could not be 
frightened or made to do what he knew was 
wrong, although the wicked Queen Jezebel tried to 
have him killed, and sent people out to search for 
him. Elijah lived in a very simple way among the 
mountains and in the forests. His hair hung long and 
shaggy down his back, and a rough cloak of sheep- 
skin, fastened around the waist by a leather belt, was 
his only clothing. 

At last a terrible drought came over the country ; 
there was no rain, the grass and trees dried, and all 
the land became dusty and dreary. For three long, 
terrible years it did not rain, and finally the king 
himself started out and travelled over the country, to 
see if he could not find some place where there 
was still left a little green grass for his cattle. On 
his way he met Elijah, and he said to him : " Is that 
you ; you, who are the troubler of Israel ? " "I have 
not troubled Israel," said Elijah boldly. " But you 
and your father's family have done so, because you 
have forsaken the commandments of Jehovah and 
followed after Baal. Now go and gather all Israel 
and all your eight hundred and fifty prophets to 
meet me on the top of Mount Carmel." 

It is a wonder that Ahab did not kill this bold 
prophet who had dared to blame him to his face, but 
perhaps he was afraid of him, for he sent and did what 



I9 2 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Elijah, had commanded. Then when they were all 
together on the mountain Elijah stood up and said : 
" How long halt ye between two opinions, if Jehovah 
be God, follow him, bnt if Baal follow him." But no 
one answered a word ; then Elijah cried : " I, even I 
only am left, a prophet of Jehovah." So he told the 
people to build an altar, and after doing this they 
killed a sacrifice and laid it on the altar, then all day, 
even until night, the people cried : " O Baal hear us." 
"When their gods did not answer them, they cried 
yet louder, and at last in their fury, cut themselves 
with knives till they were covered with blood. After 
they had cried all day and no answer had come, 
Elijah, too, built an altar and called upon Jehovah 
to send fire to burn his sacrifice ; and answer came, 
the fire fell like lightning from the sky, and all the 
people, when they saw it, covered their faces, and 
cried : " Jehovah, he is God." And after that the 
sky grew black with clouds and a great rain came 
and watered the thirsty land. 

Then Elijah had no mercy on the false prophets 
and killed them all. The queen was very angry at 
this, and would have killed Elijah, but he ran away 
and hid in the forest. As he lay under a tree, his 
heart was very sad and he prayed that he might die, 
and said : " It is enough ; now, O Jehovah, take 
away my life." And he went into a cave, and the 
voice of Jehovah said to him, "Go forth and 
stand on the mountain before Jehovah. And be- 



THE GREAT HEBREW PROPHETS. 1 93 

hold Jehovah passed by, and a great and strong 
wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the 
rocks before Jehovah ; but Jehovah was not in the 
wind ; and after the wind, an earthquake ; but Je- 
hovah was not in the earthquake; and after the 
earthquake a fire ; but Jehovah was not in the fire ; 
and after the fire a still, small voice." And in this still, 
small voice, the voice of conscience, God spoke, as he 
always speaks to those whose minds are fully open 
to receive His words. 

I have not time to tell you all the stories which 
are written of this brave old man, and of his dis- 
ciple, the prophet Elisha. But the account of 
Elijah's death is one of the most beautiful of all the 
Hebrew stories, and shows how much the writer 
loved and reverenced him. 

This is what it says : The prophet felt that Je- 
hovah was about to call him away from earth, and 
he wandered off beyond the river Jordan ; he meant 
to go alone, but Elisha loved him dearly, and would 
not let him go without a friend, and so he sadly fol- 
lowed the dear master, whom he felt he was soon to 
lose. As they went on their way, the old prophet said 
to the younger : " Ask what I shall do for thee before 
I be taken from thee." And Elisha said : " I pray thee, 
let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me." And 
he said : " Thou hast asked a hard thing, but if thou 
see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so." 
" And it came to pass as they still went on and talked. 



194 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of 
fire which parted them asunder, and Elijah went up 
by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, 
and he cried : i My father, my father, the chariots of 
Israel, and the horsemen thereof ! ' " 

A famous musician named Mendelssohn has writ- 
ten a great oratorio about this grand old Hebrew 
prophet, and I hope you will some time hear it sung. 

All through those dreadful years, when in both 
the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah, 
there were wicked, cruel kings, and the people forgot 
the religion of their fathers and worshipped idols or 
prayed to the moon and stars, there were wise, far- 
seeing men, who told them of their sins and warned 
them of the great troubles that would come upon 
them, if they did not give up their wickedness. The 
words which these prophets spoke are written in 
little books, and put together at the end of the Old 
Testament. We do not know who wrote all of them, 
or in fact most of the books which I have spoken of, 
sometimes they were written by the prophets them- 
selves, and sometimes by friends who remembered 
what they had said. 

Some of the prophets lived in the city, and their 
writings give us a little idea of the things they were 
in the habit of seeing there. This is shown by their 
language, which is full of references to chariots, and 
horses, and soldiers, to priests and sacrifices, to kings 
and palaces, to city walls and flat-roofed houses, 



THE GREAT HEBREW PROPHETS. 1 95 

to the bracelets, and rings, and other ornaments 
which the women wore, and to the glory and beauty 
of the temple. 

Others of the prophets lived in the country ; they 
watched their sheep, or trimmed their vines, and 
gathered figs and olives. In their writings we read 
about the threshing-floors, where they often saw the 
grain threshed ; of the locusts and mildew which 
spoiled their crops ; of those great trees, the cedars 
of Lebanon, which grew on their mountains. They 
speak of sheep and goats, and of the lions and 
wild animals which sometimes came from their dens, 
in the rocky clefts of the mountains, down into the 
valleys. 

We know very little about the lives of these 
prophets : they never say much about themselves, 
for their hearts are full of the message which they 
feel they must tell to the unbelieving men around 
them. Amidst all the drunkenness and cruelty and 
wickedness of their time, these men spoke their 
brave warnings, and told the people that Jehovah 
cared not so much to have them offer burnt offerings 
and sacrifices as to have them love truth and justice. 

These true-hearted, clear-eyed men were disgusted 
with the Jews, who foolishly imagined that God 
could be pleased with any outward thing which they 
did, while they themselves were mean and selfish in 
their hearts. One of them, a shepherd named Amos, 
said : " It is an evil time. Seek good and not evil, 



19° GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

that ye may live." And then he says, as if speak- 
ing for Jehovah : " I hate, I despise your feasts and 
your solemn assemblies, but let righteousness roll 
down as a mighty stream." Another, named Micah, 
spoke these words, among the noblest ever uttered 
by any of the prophets : " What doth Jehovah re- 
quire of thee but to do justly, and love mercy, and 
walk humbly with thy God ? " This seems very 
simple to us, and we can hardly imagine how strange 
such words must have seemed to those people who 
knew so little about God. They thought of Him as 
a great king, and they supposed the way to please 
Him was to offer Him sacrifices, as one would give 
presents to a real king. 

The book of Isaiah, which was written at different 
times by two men, is perhaps the most important of 
all the writings of, the prophets. It contains a great 
deal of very sublime poetry and prophecy, and the 
men who wrote the books of the New Testament 
often quote from it. 

For hundreds of years the Jews looked forward to 
the coming of some great leader and saviour, whom 
they thought would be the " Messiah," which means 
the "Anointed One." They did not know very 
much about it, but many of their prophets, especially 
the unknown man who wrote the last part of the 
book called Isaiah, tell of some one who was to 
come. When at last Jesus came to save the people 
from their sins, and to teach them the way to God, 



THE GREAT HEBREW PROPHETS. Ip7 

some of the Jews, who believed in Jesus, saw in Him 
the Messiah, and loved to read the verses which 
Isaiah had written so many hundred years before, 
and which seemed to them to describe Jesus as they 
knew him. 

There were a great many prophets. The words 
of some of them have come down to us, but many 
were doubtless lost and forgotten. Some of them 
had long, hard names, which you would not remem- 
ber if I should tell you. The names of two of them 
are Daniel and Jonah, which I think you have heard 
before, and will remember. 

The only other one of whom I shall tell you was 
the prophet Jeremiah, who lived in Jerusalem at the 
time when the king of Babylon came and fought 
against the city. Unlike most of the prophets, he was 
a priest. But the other priests and the many false 
prophets hated him. He stood alone among his peo- 
ple ; and as he told them of the evils which were com- 
ing on them, there was no one to believe him or to 
stand by him. He was a mournful prophet, for it 
broke his heart to see the misery that was coming 
upon his dear city. He cried : " O that I could com- 
fort myself against sorrow ! My heart is faint within 
me. O that my head were waters and mine eyes a 
fountain of tears that I might weep day and night ! " 

His bold words made him so many enemies, that 
he was beaten and thrown into prison, and was in 
danger of his life. Once he was put down into a 



I98 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

damp, slimy well, where he sank deep into the mud, 
and would have died if a friend had not persuaded 
the king to let him be lifted out. 

But at last, after the city had fallen, and the poor 
captive Jews were carried away into exile, after they 
had nearly starved to death inside the city walls, Jere- 
miah was taken out of prison and carried in chains 
with the others. But, strange to say, he was soon set 
free and allowed to go where he pleased. He longed 
for his dear city, although it was in ruins, and so he 
turned back to live with those who had been left 
behind among its broken walls. 

In spite of his sorrow, when the worst which he 
had expected had really come, his words show us 
that, like a true prophet, he could see beyond the 
misery and suffering around him and have faith in 
his God. 

" Jehovah will not cast me off forever," he said. 

" For though he causes grief, yet will he have 
compassion. 

" For he doth not willingly grieve the children 
of men." 

You will never find among the writings of the 
Greeks or of those of any other religion such patient, 
trustful words as these of the old Hebrew prophet. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

BABYLON. 

OF all the wonderful, rich cities which have ever 
been built since the world began, the city of 
Babylon, according to all accounts, must have been 
one of the largest, richest, and most wonderful. 

Like the great cities of Egypt, it was built on 
a level plain on either side of a broad river, and 
around it, as far as the eye could see, were rich fields 
of golden grain, and orchards, and groves of green 
trees. Travellers who visited Babylon in ancient 
times tell us that the city was at least forty miles 
around, and inside its walls were great fields and 
parks and fine, straight streets, and houses three or 
four stories high. Around all the city was a thick 
wall wide enough for horses and chariots to drive 
abreast ou its top, and higher than Bunker Hill 
monument, which all the Boston boys and girls 
have seen, and higher than the goddess of Liberty 
in New York harbor, which of course my little 
friends in New York know about. 

Near the city were beds of clay from which bricks 
were made, and the whole city was built of brick 

199 



20Q - GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

and plaster. The houses were often painted in 
bright colors, red, yellow, and blue, and must have 
looked very gay indeed. 

The temples and the palaces and the queen's 
gardens, were the most astonishing things in this 
very wonderful city. 

I told you how the people of Egypt liked to 
build huge stone temples and lofty pyramids that 
rose hundreds of feet in the air. In many ways the 
people in Babylon were like those in Egypt. They, 
too, liked immense temples and palaces, and liked to 
build every thing in a large, strong way, so that it 
would seem as if it must last forever. 

The greatest temple of all was that of the god 
Bel. This rose up high from the level plain, hun- 
dreds of feet towards the blue sky, and winding 
round and round it was a road which led up to the 
top. From there one could view, not the yellow 
sands of the desert, which one sees from the top of 
the Great Pyramid, but miles and miles of yellow 
grain, and bright flowers and green grass. And be- 
neath lay the great city in all its splendor. 

On one side was the palace of the kings, which 
was seven miles around; and there also were the 
famous " Hanging Gardens," which the king had 
built to please his queen. These gardens were the 
wonder of the world ; they were built one above an- 
other at an immense expense, and must have been 
very strange and beautiful. 




TEMPLK. 



201 



202 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

From the top of this great temple of Bel one could 
also see many canals, some large and some small, 
which carried the water from the river all through 
the parks, and the gardens, and the fields, so that 
there should be plenty of water when there was no 
rain. 

These great walls and temples and palaces could 
not have been built if there had not been many 
slaves, and if the king had not been, like most kings 
in those days, a great tyrant, who always had his 
own way, and forced the people to give money and 
work to carry out his extravagant wishes, just as the 
kings in Egypt did. 

All the people in this city and the country round 
about worshipped the Sun god or some other god. 
They studied the movements of the sun and the 
moon and the stars and knew more about them than 
any people of their time. Many of them thought 
they could tell what would happen in the future by 
studying the positions of the stars. This foolish 
notion was held for thousands of years and there are 
still some persons silly enough to believe such 
things. 

If you had walked along the streets of Babylon 
and looked at the ladies and gentlemen who lived 
there in that far-off time of which I am telling, 
you would have seen strange sights. 

The men and women dressed very much alike, 
and you would have noticed that nearly every 



BABYLON. 



203 



man wore long hair and carried a walking stick with 
a carved handle, and also always had a seal made of 
some hard stone on which small figures were carved. 
If you had gone into one of the houses of the 
poor you would have found that they had but little 
to eat and drink besides dates and goats' milk, 




PILING HEADS OF CAPTIVES. 
(From an ancient picture.) 



though they sometimes had cucumbers and melons 
also. In a rich man's house you would have found 
a great many kinds of fruit, fish, meat, and costly 
wine, of which too much was generally drunk. 

If you were invited to dinner there you would 
have seen a great display of gold and silver dishes 
and smelled rich perfumes, and heard music from 
very queer instruments, such as we never see now. 



204 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

You would have found the people busy, wide- 
awake, and intelligent, but often fierce and cruel to 
their enemies and captives. They were extremely 
religious, after their fashion ; they had many gods 
and temples and ceremonies, and their priests were 
rich and powerful. 

The king of Babylon left the poorest of the Jews 
at Jerusalem and took away with him only the rich- 
est and most important of them. 

They were taken across the plains far to the east, 
and after many days came in sight of this magnifi- 
cent city, so different from the city of David, whose 
ruined walls they had left behind them on its rocky 
hill-top. They must have looked with wonder and 
dread upon the mighty king who ruled such a city, 
and upon his great army of soldiers with their shin- 
ing spears and helmets, their battle-axes, bows and 
arrows, and chariots drawn by swift horses. 

They saw the generals and judges, the king's 
counsellors, and the governors of the different di- 
visions of the country who served under the king, 
and every thing must have seemed terrible to them 
as they realized that they were far from home and 
captives in a land where their God was not known 
and they were despised. 











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CHAPTER XXXIV. 



THE Jews remained in Babylon about sixty years. 
In all that long time they did not forget 
their religion, or their native land, and they taught 
their little children who were born during this time 
to love and serve the God of their fathers. 

They learned the language spoken by the people 
of Babylon, and many of the new words were adopt- 
ed into their own Hebrew tongue. It was in fact 
very much changed, so that the language of the com- 
mon people was quite different, when they returned 
to Jerusalem, from what it was when they left it as 
captives. They learned many other things which 
they never would have known if they had remained 
in their little kingdom of Judah, and some of these 
things were an advantage to them. 

Some of the Jews, probably fearing that the his- 
tories and stories of their kings and people might be 
lost and forgotten, now began to write them down. 
The Book of the Kings, which begins with Solomon, 
who lived about five hundred years before this, tells 

205 



206 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

about the history of the kings clown to the Captivity, 
and was written at this time by some man whose 
name we do not know. 

The most famous of all the captive Jews was a 
man named Daniel, who, as we read, was good, and 
wise, and handsome. Moses had given the Jews 
strict commands about what they were not to eat, 
and although Daniel received the favor of the king 
and had wine and meat provided by him, yet for 
fear that he should eat something which was forbid- 
den, he refused it all, and ate nothing but simple 
porridge or beans and peas, and drank water. 

One of the books of the Old Testament is called 
the Book of Daniel. We do not know who wrote 
it ; probably it was not all written at once, and much 
of it not until a long time after Daniel lived. It is 
a very curious book and is hard to understand, so I 
shall not trouble your little heads about it. It con- 
tains, however, two or three very beautiful stories 
about Daniel, which you will like to know. 

We read that the king was greatly pleased with 
the young man, because he had told him the meaning 
of a dream, and it says : u Then the king made Daniel 
a great man, and gave him many gifts, and made him 
ruler over the whole province of Babylon." The 
other officers did not like to have a man from a 
foreign land set over them, so they laid a plan to 
bring him into disgrace. They knew that every day 
he kneeled three times before his window which 



THE JEWS IN BABYLON, AND THEIR RETURN. 207 

looked towards Jerusalem, and prayed to his God.- 
So they begged the king to throw into the den of 
lions any man who for forty days should ask any 
thing of either a god or man except of the king 
alone. 

They very well knew that a brave, true man like 
Daniel, would not obey any law which he knew to be 
wrong ; and so, as they had expected, he knelt and 
prayed as usual. Then these wicked men gladly 
hurried to the king to tell him about it. He had 
not imagined when he made this law that it was 
going to injure Daniel, and he felt terribly at the 
thought of throwing him to the fierce lions. 

But he did not dare to break his promise, and the 
account says : " Then the king commanded, and 
they brought Daniel and cast him into the den of 
lions. ISTow the king spake and said unto Daniel, 
1 Thy God will deliver thee,' and a stone was brought, 
and laid upon the mouth of the den. Then the king 
went to his palace and spent the night fasting ; 
neither were instruments of music brought before 
him ; and his sleep fled from him. Then the king 
arose very early in the morning, and went in haste 
unto the den of lions, and cried : ' O Daniel, servant 
of the living God, is thy God whom thou servest 
able to deliver thee from the lions ? ' Then said 
Daniel : ' My God hath shut the lions' mouths, and 
they have not hurt me.' Then the king was glad, 
and commanded that they should take Daniel up 



208 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the 
den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, be- 
cause he trusted in his God." 

Among the most wonderful people in ancient 
times, were the Persians, who lived east of the city of 
Babylon, and who came with many horses and a 
great army to fight against the people of this great 
walled city. 

These Persians had a religion which was much 
more like that of the Jews, than any other religion 
of that time. 

They believed in one great, good spirit, and one 
great, bad spirit, who made all things, good and bad, 
and who were just as unlike each other as darkness 
and light. 

These Persians hated idols even more than the 
Jews did, and never had temples or altars. They 
were wonderfully fine soldiers, and could ride on 
horseback and shoot with their arrows better than 
any other people, I suppose. The best thing about 
them was, that they always spoke the truth, and 
despised a lie above all things. 

One night, when the king of Babylon had a great 
feast, he sent to the heathen temple and had all the 
gold and silver dishes and cups brought, which he 
had taken from the Jews' temple at Jerusalem. 
The king and his wives and lords, and the great 
company which he had invited, drank wine out of 
them, and had a great deal of wicked and foolish 



THE JEWS IN BABYLON, AND THEIR RETURN, 209 

carousing. They were not at all afraid of the strong 
Persian army camping outside their walls. We read 
that suddenly as the king sat feasting he saw a hand 
writing mysterious words upon the wall of his pal- 
ace. He was greatly troubled, for he did not know 
what they meant. He called the wise men to ex- 
plain it, but none of them except Daniel could tell 
what the strange words meant, for they were written 
in the Hebrew language. 

He told the king that they said this : " God hath 
numbered thy kingdom and brought it to an end ; 
thou art weighed in the balances and art found 
wanting ; thy kingdom is divided and given to the 
Medes and Persians." 

That very night, while all the people were gayly 
feasting, and the guard had forgotten to watch the 
great gates of the river which ran through the city, 
the Persians, outside the walls, had laid a shrewd 
plan to enter it. They dug deep ditches, and turned 
aside the course of the river so that the water sank 
lower and lower in the river's bed, and at last they 
crept under the gates and surprised the city. 

Then a fearful night of bloodshed followed ; peo- 
ple ran wildly about in the darkness and were struck 
down and killed by the Persian soldiers ; the king 
was slain, and Babylon, the great city of which he 
had been so proud, fell into the hands of the 
strangers. 

The Hebrew prophets had before this told that 



2IO GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Babylon would be completely destroyed and wiped 
out from the face of the earth. They expected that 
this would come soon, but it did not come at once. 
It was sixteen hundred years before the city en- 
tirely disappeared, and the plain that had once been 
so beautiful and green had turned into a desert, in 
which only the wild beasts lived. 

Although the glory of Babylon had departed, and 
its high walls were broken down, it still remained 
for a long time a great city. 

The new Persian king was named Cyrus. He took 
pity on the poor Jewish captives who longed for 
their dear Jerusalem, and he allowed them to take 
all the precious treasures which had been brought 
from the temple, and to set out for the land of their 
fathers, which none of the younger ones had ever 
seen. 

It was a company of about fifty thousand people 
who set forth on the tiresome journey across the 
plains westward. They had to go slowly on their 
camels and horses, and it was four months before the 
rocky hills and green valleys of their own land met 
their eager eyes. 

This land where their fathers' God had been served, 
seemed so dear and sacred to them that they now be- 
gan to call it the " Holy Land," and Jerusalem the 
" Holy City," and for many years the name Jerusa- 
lem was almost forgotten. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE JEWS UNDER THEIR MASTERS. 

UNTIL the time when the Jews had been car- 
ried away captive to Babylon, they had 
always governed themselves. For nearly nine hun- 
dred years they had not had any other nation to 
rule over them, but now they were never again to be 
a free people. First under the Persians, and then 
under the Greeks and Romans, for over five hundred 
years they had rulers who spoke a foreign language, 
who made them pay taxes, and who treated them 
sometimes cruelly and sometimes kindly. 

The Persian rulers did not interfere much with 
their religion, and let them do as they pleased about 
most things. 

The first thought in the minds of devout Jews 
was to rebuild the Temple. The first Temple, 
which had been built by Solomon about five hun- 
dred years before, had been almost entirely de- 
stroyed, so they began again. They cut down the 
great cedars of Lebanon, and sent for skilful work- 
men, and all were busy, either working themselves, 
or earning money to pay for the cost of the new 

211 



212 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

building. It was larger, but not so rich and splen- 
did as Solomon's Temple, although its doors were 
overlaid with gold. 

When it was quite done, there was a great fes- 
tival, and such rejoicing as the sad-hearted Jews 
had not known for many years. 

Some of the Jews had remained in Babylon. 
Among these was a wise man, named Ezra, who 
Was a scribe, that is, a man whose business it is to 
study the law of Moses and to write. 

He knew that the Temple had been built again, 
and he longed to go and teach his people of the 
law ; for the greatest of the prophets were dead, 
and the people had few leaders and teachers. 

The king of Persia was very kind to him, and not 
only allowed him to go, but let him take with him 
all other Jews who wished to go, and he also gave 
him a great deal of gold and silver to use for the 
Temple. 

Probably Ezra had never seen Jerusalem before, 
but he had dreamed of it all his life, and his heart 
must have beat fast when on the journey the bro- 
ken walls and the new Temple of the Holy City 
were first caught sight of, far off on the western 
hills. 

Ezra, who had carefully studied the law which he 
brought with him from Babylon, was much stricter 
than the Jews who lived at Jerusalem. 

Some of them had married heathen wives, just as 



THE JEWS UNDER THEIR MASTERS. 21$ 

David and Solomon had done before them, and had 
not thought it wrong. 

After Ezra had been in Jerusalem a few days, he 
was told of this, and he was so shocked and fright- 
ened, that he rent his mantle and tore his hair in his 
horror at what he thought God would consider a 
terrible sin. All day long he sat in the Temple 
speechless with grief. 

At evening time, when the people assembled for 
the sacrifice, throwing himself on his knees, he wept 
and prayed that God would have mercy on them. 
They were so impressed with Ezra's earnestness, and 
so afraid they had done wrong, that all those who 
had married wives of other nations put them and 
their children away. This seems to us very unkind 
and unnecessary, but they thought they were doing 
right. 

Besides Ezra, another great leader now appeared. 
His name was Nehemiah. He was a cup-bearer at 
the palace of the Persian king, far from Jerusalem. 
He often thought of the Holy City, and of its 
ruined walls, and longed to go and rebuild them, 
and thus make the city secure against its enemies. 
One day, as he handed the cup of wine to the 
king, as was his custom, the king noticed how sad 
he looked, and asked the reason. Then Nehemiah 
told him how he was mourning for the city of his 
fathers, and how he wept as he thought of its 
broken walls and gates which had been burned. 



214 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

The king, taking pity on his servant, asked him 
what he would like to do. Nehemiah was almost 
afraid to tell, but took courage and spoke out 
bravely, and told him what he would like. Then 
the king decided to send him, and gave him letters 
to people who would help him, and sent a com- 
pany of horsemen to conduct him on his way. 

After he had come to Jerusalem, one night, Ne- 
hemiah took a few friends and quietly went, under 
cover of the darkness, around the city, to see the 
broken walls and to plan just what he should do. 

When those around Jerusalem who belonged to 
other nations, learned what he had planned to do, 
they were much vexed, and tried to put a stop to it. 
So Nehemiah had to work carefully and keep a 
guard all the time. Every man who was building 
had his sword fastened to his sash, and the trumpet- 
er stood ready to sound the alarm if their enemies 
should attack them. So anxious was Nehemiah to 
have the work go on, that neither he nor his serv- 
ants and guard took off their clothes night nor day. 

Sometimes he was in great danger of being killed ; 
but he would not seek a safe place and stayed brave- 
ly at his post. 

At last the great work was finished, and for the 
first time since the city had fallen, more than one 
hundred years before, it was again strong and 
secure. 

Ezra, the old scribe, of whom we have just now 



THE JEWS UNDER THEIR MASTERS. 21 5 

read, did not help to build the walls ; he was busy 
studying the law. Few of the people could read or 
understand the law, and he felt that he must do what 
he could to make it plain to those who knew so little 
about it. So one morning, as the sun was rising, a 
multitude gathered to hear him, and he stood up out- 
doors, in a great wooden pulpit, and unfolded the 
long roll of parchment which he had probably 
brought from Babylon. Then while all the people 
stood and eagerly listened, he read and explained to 
them the laws which were supposed to have been 
written by Moses, but which had perhaps never been 
fully known, and certainly never kept, during the 
many hundreds of years since his time. 

The Jews had always thought a great deal about 
the Temple and the offerings and the sacrifices, but 
they had not thought much or known much about 
this law, and gathering together to hear it read, was 
a strange and new thing to them. 

They now began to be more strict. In the next 
four hundred and fifty years, we find there were few 
great prophets, and few men who were not bound 
closely to the " letter of the law." They became very 
careful and particular about all sorts of little, unim- 
portant things as to the ways of sacrificing animals 
in the Temple, and about eating and drinking and 
dressing according to certain rules. They also began 
to be a great deal more strict than they had ever 
been before, in keeping one year in seven as a year 



2l6 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

of rest, and in keeping the Sabbath day. They felt 
so very strongly about this, that several times when 
they knew their enemies were going to attack them 
on the Sabbath day, they chose to be defeated rather 
than to defend themselves. Many times they suffered 
terribly on account of this. 

Many of them also began to feel it was not quite 
right to dare to speak the name of their God, 
Jehovah, and so it came about that they spoke 
of it with great fear and trembling and called it 
" The Name." Only the high-priest was allowed 
to say " Jehovah," and even he sometimes only in 
a whisper. 

In the early Old Testament stories, we find that 
the Jews sometimes believed in other gods as well as 
Jehovah, and thought of Him, not as the only God, 
but simply as greater than the gods of other nations. 
We find that by this time they had come to a very 
firm, clear belief in Jehovah alone. They no longer 
believed in heathen gods, but they believed in good 
and bad spirits, angels and devils. 

After some time they were no longer under the 
control of the Persians, but of another nation called 
the Greeks. 

It was during this time that the Jews suffered 
greatly and many of them were cruelly put to death 
because they would not give up their religious ideas 
and customs. We read that an aged scribe, ninety 
years old, who refused to swallow a piece of pork 



THE JEWS UNDER THEIR MASTERS. 21? 

which was put into his mouth, was tortured until he 
died a painful death. 

The Temple was polluted, that is, made vile and 
unclean in the eyes of the Jews, and many copies of 
the books of the Law were burnt. Although the 
Jews were cruelly persecuted during part of the 
time that they were ruled by the Greeks, yet in 
many ways it was a great advantage to them to be- 
come acquainted with this remarkable people from 
Greece. Many Jews learned the Greek language, 
which was much finer than the Hebrew tongue, and 
contained the most valuable literature of any in the 
ancient world. 

A famous Greek general named Alexander, of 
whom we shall soon hear more, had built a great 
city in Egypt named Alexandria, after himself. 

A colony of Jews lived here, and during this 
time, some of their most learned men translated the 
Hebrew Scriptures, which we call the Old Testa- 
ment, into the Greek language. At first, some of 
the Jews at Jerusalem felt it was wrong to have 
their sacred books written in any other than the 
Hebrew tongue ; but after a while the Greek trans- 
lation came into general use, and at the time wher 
Jesus lived, nearly all the people read the Law and 
the Prophets, and the Psalms, in the Greek lan- 
guage. 

One hundred and sixty years before the time of 
Christ, another great nation, called the Eomans, 



2l8 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

ruled over the Jews. One of their great generals, 
named Pompey, came to Jerusalem, and to the great 
horror of the pious Jews, entered into the Temple, 
and went straight into the most sacred place of all, 
the Holy of Holies, where only the high-priest was 
ever allowed to go. This Roman general was curi- 
ous to see what he would find. He had often won- 
dered what this mysterious Grod of the Jews was 
like, and probably expected to find some image of 
Him in this most sacred place. 

He was greatly astonished when, on lifting the 
curtain, neither statue, nor picture, nor likeness of 
any God met his eyes. It seemed a strange thing to 
him to find a temple, a priesthood, and a law, but no 
Grod who could be seen by mortal eyes. 

A short time before Jesus was born, a Roman, 
named Herod, who was then king of the Jews, re- 
built the Temple, which had become partly de- 
stroyed. It was built of snow-white marble, with 
golden spikes and pinnacles, which reflected the rays 
of the rising and setting sun. There were many 
coui'ts and great galleries, with long rows of marble 
pillars, and the great gates of the Temple covered 
with gold, or silver, or bronze, were so large that at 
night, when they were carefully closed, it took the 
strength of many men to roll them together, and fasten 
them with heavy bolts and bars. This was the third 
Temple which the Jews had in the thousand years 
which had passed since the time of King David. 



THE JEWS UNDER THEIR MASTERS. 



219 



And with this building of the Temple we will close 
this story of the Jews, for now we begin upon a 
new time, when the coming of Jesus and the begin- 
ning of the Christian religion was to make a vast 
change in the thoughts of men, and alter the history 
of the whole world. 




CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE GKEEKS. 

THE land of Greece Avas different from either 
the country of the Egyptians, or that of the 
Babylonians. It had no broad, level plains, or 
deserts, or great rivers. 

It was much more like the country of the Jews, 
which had high, snow-capped mountains, and green 
valleys, and little rivers and brooks. 

Unlike the country of the Jews, however, it was 
three fourths surrounded by the sea, and as it had 
many fine harbors, the people built ships, and trav- 
elled, and carried on a great deal of business by 
means of them. 

The Greeks were, in most respects, the handsom- 
est, the wisest, and the most interesting of all the 
nations of the old world. Few people now study 
the languages of the Persians, or Egyptians, or 
Jews, but almost every young person who goes to 
college is sure to study the Greek language and the 
history of the Greeks. One can hardly go into an 
Art Museum, or even into a house where people live 



THE GREEKS. 221 

who care for beautiful things, without seeing some 
picture or plaster copy of one of the beautiful 
Greek statues, or some vase or ornament made after 
the design of an artist who lived more than two 
thousand years ago in this land of Greece. 

The Egyptians and the people of Babylon and 
Persia liked to build temples, and carve statues, 
which were very large and strong, but they rarely 
made any thing which was beautiful ; neither did 
the Jews, who never made statues nor cared much 
for making any thing, except their Temple, beautiful 
to the eye. 

The Greeks, however, loved beauty in every thing. 
They cared a great deal for making their language, 
their poetry, their cities and temples, and their bodies 
beautiful. Compared with most other nations, they 
were a free, happy people, with milder manners and 
laws than were elsewhere known. 

Of all ancient peoples, they alone had a great liter- 
ature. The Jews, of course, had their sacred writings, 
but, aside from these, they had nothing like the 
poems and plays, and the books on science and phi- 
losophy, which Ave find among the Greeks. 

The greatest poet among the Greeks was a man 
named Homer, who lived, it is supposed, not long 
after the time of Solomon, that is, about one thousand 
years before Christ. He wrote a long poem about a 
war between the Greeks and the people of a great 
walled city, called Troy, or Ilium. This was called 



222 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

the Trojan war, and the poem of Homer's was called 
the Iliad. 

He wrote another book also, called the Odyssey, 
which gives an account of the voyages and adven- 
tures on land and sea of Ulysses, sometimes called 
Odysseus, a famous hero, Avho fought in the Trojan 
war. These great poems became a sort of Bible to 
the Greeks ; they sang and read and studied them, 
and were never tired of hearing about the gods and 
goddesses, and the brave heroes and beautful women 
of whom Homer wrote. They themselves were often 
helped to do brave and noble deeds by remembering 
those of past ages. 

The Greeks, for a long time, had no very clear 
ideas about God, or about right and wrong as we 
understand them. Like all other nations of that 
time, they did not think it wrong to keep slaves, and 
to do many cruel things to their enemies. Most of 
them thought the worst thing which a man could do 
was to be cowardly, or to leave the bodies < f his 
friends unburied after their death. They believed 
in a great many gods and goddesses, some of whose 
names perhaps you already know. The most import- 
ant are known to us by the names of Juno, Venus, 
Mai's, Neptune, and Apollo. These all had their 
home on the top of a high mountain called Olympus, 
where lived the greatest god of all, named Jupiter. 
They thought of these gods as being very much like 
themselves, only far more powerful, and able to go 




■■'■'■ '■'■ ■mu^,:,.^::: ;...■' S =av :Ali,^g^ClJ|: 



224 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

instantly from one place to another. They built 
beautiful marble temples to these gods and goddesses, 
and placed wonderful statues in them which were 
sometimes covered with gold. 

They had no such priesthood as the Egyptians 
and Persians and Jews had, and there were no regu- 
lar bloody sacrifices such as the Jews always had in 
their Temple. 

Like all people of that time, the Greeks were 
superstitious, and believed in signs, just as some 
foolish people nowadays believe that Friday is a bad 
day on which to begin a journey, or that if thirteen 
people sit down to a table one will die before the 
end of the year. When the Greeks were in doubt 
what to do, they sometimes killed birds or animals 
and cut them open, and were guided by the marks 
which they found within. Sometimes they went to 
the place where a god was supposed to speak 
through a voice called the "oracle." 

Once the oracle is reported to have told who was 
the wisest man among the Greeks. It said this man 
was Socrates, and truly the oracle was right. Socra- 
tes was one of the noblest and most remarkable men 
who ever lived, and is therefore one of the three 
great men, among all the hundreds of famous Greeks, 
whom I have selected to tell you about. I have 
spoken of Homer, the great poet, who lived five or 
six hundred years before Socrates. Many famous 
poets and soldiers and artists lived between the time 



THE GREEKS. 225 

of Homer and Socrates, and I hope you will learn a 
great deal about them when you are older, but we 
have not time to speak of them now. 

Socrates lived in Athens, the most important city 
in Greece, at the same time that Nehemiah, the Jew, 
came back from the Persian kino- and built the walls 
around Jerusalem. Probably these two men never 
heard of each other, for, although their countries 
were not far apart, the Jews and Greeks had veiy 
little to do with each other until the time of Alex- 
ander, who is the third man of whom I shall tell you. 

Although the oracle said no one was wiser than 
Socrates, yet he was modest and did not think him- 
self wise, except that he knew enough to know his 
own ignorance, which he found was more than most 
people knew of themselves. He went about the 
streets, in the temples, and the market places, and 
groves, talking to every one who would hear him. 
One of his friends named Plato, who followed and 
listened to him, wrote down many of the dialogues 
which Socrates held with all kinds of people. 

Socrates always began by asking questions, and he 
was promptly answered by the thoughtless ones who 
felt quite positive they were right, and who some- 
times thought his questions rather queer and stupid. 
Socrates did not contradict them ; he modestly went 
on asking questions, but in such a way that they 
soon began to see they had not looked on all sides 
of the subject, and there were many more things than 



226 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

they had ever imagined to be considered, before a 
right answer could be given. 

They came to see that many things which they 
had taken for granted, were only half true or not 
true at all. Socrates' shrewd questions set people 
to thinking as they had never thought before. They 
could not but respect him, for he was poor and simple, 
made no pretence, and was always seeking after 
wisdom. His questions were generally as to what 
was just or unjust, what was religious, what was true 
and false. 

At last many people began to suspect that he did 
not believe much in the gods, and was teaching bad 
things to young men ; so it was finally judged that he 
was worthy of death, as he would not promise to do 
any differently. While he was in prison, his friends 
came to him, and though they shed bitter tears, yet 
he was ^cheerful and brave, and comforted them, and 
talked about the hope of a future life. 

At last when Socrates was made to drink the 
poison which was to end his life, he said to his 
friends who stood around him weeping : " The hour 
of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to 
die, and you to live. Which is better God only 
knows." 

Even in the writings of the Jews, we find few men 
who had a greater love of truth, or were more brave 
and noble in life and death, than the noble Socrates. 
Although it is more than two thousand years since 



THE GREEKS. 227 

he died, the wisest men still study his words in order 
to learn wisdom. 

For many hundred years Greece, although a small 
country, was divided into smaller parts, and each 
part governed itself, and there was no great king 
who ruled over all the Greeks. 

Finally, however, the different parts of Greece 
were united under one famous man called Alexander 
the Great. 

He gathered an army, and set out from Greece with 
his finely trained soldiers. He went east and south 
and overcame every army which he met, no matter 
how large it was nor how small his own might be. 
He went to Egypt and built the great city of Alex- 
andria of which I told you and he passed beyond 
the country of the Jews over east, to the great city 
of the Persians, which yielded to him. 

Probably never before nor since was there so 
great a conqueror. AVhen he was only twenty-five 
years old he was master of many nations. Every- 
where that he went he carried the language and 
ideas and customs of the Greeks. In many respects, 
the Greeks, coming from the newer world of the 
west, had higher ideas than the people of these east- 
ern nations. They had better ideas of women, and 
believed that each man should have only one wife. 

It was at this time, when the countries ruled by 
the Persians came under the control of Alexander, 
that the Jews suffered a great deal on account of 



228 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

their religion, for the different Greek rulers cared 
nothing for the Temple of the Jews, and set up tem- 
ples and images of their own gods. 

Yet, in spite of this it was, in the end, probably a 
very good thing for the Jews, who had lived a rather 
narrow life, shut in among themselves, to get ac- 
quainted with this wonderful nation of the Greeks. 




CHAPTER XXXVII. 



THE ROMANS 



OVER the blue sea, west of Greece, in a long, 
narrow country, almost surrounded by water, 
was a great and famous city named Rome. Rome 
was built before Socrates lived, or the Jews had been 
carried away to Babylon. At first it was only a 
little city on the banks of the river Tiber, but after- 
wards it became one of the greatest and most splen- 
did cities which was ever built ; and now, after more 
than twenty-five hundred years, although it is much 
smaller and not so beautiful, it is perhaps the most 
interesting city in the whole world. It would take a 
whole library full of books to tell you all the inter- 
esting and important things which are known about 
this wonderful city, and the brave, stern Romans 
who made it so famous. 

I have told you about three other famous cities, 
Jerusalem, Babylon, and Athens. Rome was never 
so large or magnificent as Babylon. It never had 
such noble men as the prophets of Jerusalem, or such 
wise men and great poets as were at Athens, but in 

229 



23O GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

some ways Rome was more important than any of 
these other cities, for it became the head and centre 
of a great empire. 

At first the people lived very simply. They had 
no emperors for hundreds of years, but got on with- 
out one very well part of the time, somewhat as we 
do in the United States. But the Romans were an 
ambitious people ; that is, they were not content 
with living as they had done. They wanted more 
land, more money, more power. They sent out from 
Rome a great many armies of soldiers and conquered 
the countries all about them. They had many wars 
with people of other nations, and although they 
were sometimes beaten, yet in the end they always 
made themselves the masters. 

They sent companies of their own people to settle 
in these countries, and Roman cities and Roman 
laws were everywhere. They made all these coun- 
tries which they had conquered pay them a great 
deal of money, so they became very rich indeed. On 
many accounts this wealth was a bad thing. It made 
the Romans lazy and selfish. They had a great 
many slaves who did all their work and they had 
nothing to do but enjoy themselves. 

They began to have splendid palaces and temples. 
They had no pipes and waterworks such as we have, 
to bring water into our houses, and force it up to 
the highest rooms, so they built long watercourses 
on high, stone arches, and carried water from the 




ROMAN AQUEDUCT, OR WATERCOURSE. 
231 



232 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

hills, off in the country, across a level plain into the 
city. This alone cost many millions of dollars. 

They built also great baths. These were magnifi- 
cent buildings, as large as an immense hotel. They 
were made of marble, and had large, fine bathing 
rooms, where the young men liked to meet and take 
hot or cold baths, and let their slaves rub, and per- 
fume, and anoint their bodies. 

Among the useful things which the Romans did, 
was to build long, straight roads finely paved with 
stone. They also built many bridges, and made 
every thing so strong and solid, that some of their 
work has lasted to this day, and I presume every 
thing which they built would have remained if it 
had not been destroyed on purpose. 

The Romans, first of all people, used arches a 
great deal in their bridges and buildings. Arches 
that are not pointed in the middle, but are simply 
half a circle, are called Roman arches, because that 
is the kind the Romans used. An arch, you know, 
is very strong ; all the stones are pressed together 
and held tight by the one in the middle, called the 
keystone, and the arch cannot easily be broken, for 
each part depends on the other. 

The power of the Roman empire was a good deal 
like that of the arch, which they were so fond of 
making. Each part was made to depend on Rome 
itself, which was the centre, and so it held together 
as a nation much longer and better than many other 
nations have done. 



234 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

It canie to be said that Rome was the mistress of 
the world, and it was true that for a long time Rome 
ruled over almost all the earth that was known. 

After the death of Alexander the Great, who had 
conquered so much of the world, there was no one to 
take his place, and the Romans being stronger than 
the Greeks, conquered them. The Jews fell into the 
hands of the Romans, and when we come to read of 
the noble Christian missionary, Paul, we shall see 
that though he was a Jew, he called himself a Ro- 
man, for he had been born with the rights of a 
Roman citizen. It was thought a fine thing to have 
been born a Roman. 

The Romans had a religion which was more like 
that of the Greeks than that of the Persians or the 
Jews. They had a great many temples and statues 
of the gods, but their religion was not so simple and 
beautiful as the religion of the Greeks. The Ro- 
mans were fine soldiers, and made a system of wise 
laws. More than any other people they knew how 
to rule with a strong hand, and to do every thing 
according to a strict order or system. But as a na- 
tion they were stern and severe ; they were not 
cheerful and happy like the Greeks, and they did 
not know how to make beautiful statues and write 
and speak in the fine style of the Greeks. The 
Romans never had so great a poet as Homer nor so 
wise a philosopher as Plato or Socrates. 

After they had grown rich and powerful and had 



THE ROMANS. 2$$ 

conquered Greece, they brought thousands of Greek 
workmen and sculptors and teachers over to Rome to 
teach them, and to build temples, and carve beauti- 
ful statues for them. Many of these Greeks, although 
they were much handsomer and wiser than their 
masters, were really slaves, and were bought and sold 
just as the poor black slaves were bought and sold 
in our own country when your papa was a little boy. 

I have told you about the Roman general named 
Pompey, who, after he had conquered Jerusalem, dared 
to enter the Temple and go into the Holy of Holies 
to see what it was that the Jews held so sacred. He 
took some of the Jews with him when he went back 
to Rome. It was the custom for Roman conquerors 
when they came home, to bring captives with them, 
and to make them march through the streets in the 
great procession which was made in their houor. 
These poor captives were often bound in chains, and 
after the crowd had laughed and mocked at them, 
they were cruelly put to death. 

Pompey spared many of these Jews, and they 
were not put to death, but were allowed to live by 
themselves in a little corner of the city. 

About this time, which was some years before 
Herod began to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, 
there lived a very famous man named Julius Csesar. 
He was a great general, and was perhaps the great- 
est soldier from the time of Alexander the Great 
down to the time of our own nineteenth century. 



236 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

He travelled far and wide with his brave Konian 
soldiers, conquering all the fierce tribes who lived 
to the west of Rome, He was not so cruel as many 
conquerors of his time, and made his enemies respect 
him. Many of those he conquered became Roman 
soldiers. On one of his journeys, it is said, he went 
as far as the country which we now call England. 

Although there was a great deal which was cruel 
and dreadful about all these many wars and the tak- 
ing away the freedom of so many brave people, yet 
it was not entirely bad. The Latin language which 
the Romans spoke and the Roman customs and laws 
were carried among wild, ignorant people ; the good 
roads, the strong forts and walls and fine buildings 
to which the Romans were accustomed, were quite 
new to these people, who lived in the great forests 
and marshes, where now the French, and German, 
and English people live. 

These wild people had different languages which 
we do not know. They did not speak English and 
French and German as the people do who live there 
now. 

Caesar had such power that at last many people 
began to be afraid of him. They feared that he 
wanted to be emperor, and Rome had never had an 
emperor. So one day, as he stood in Rome before 
the statue of Pompey in the senate-house, five sen- 
ators rushed upon him and stabbed him. 

The story of the life and death of this great man 




237 



238 GREAT THOUGHTS TOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

is one of the most interesting in the world, and you 
will sometime like to get some friend to read to you 
the play which Shakespeare has written about it. 

I knew a bright little boy only six years old, who 
used to think there was nothing more interesting 
than to sit in his papa's lap after tea and hear him 
read this play about the brave old Romans who lived 
so long ago. 

It was not long after the death of Julius Caesar, how- 
ever, before the Romans did have an emperor. He 
was called Csesar Augustus, and it was while he 
was at the head of the great Roman nation that, far 
east of Rome, in a little village in the country of the 
Jews, was born a child whose name shall be every- 
where known when all the emperors of the world 
have long been forgotten. 

Now we must leave the great, proud city of Rome 
for a little while, and travel back east, beyond 
Greece and Egypt, to the same country and village 
where, about one thousand years before, David, the 
shepherd boy, had tended his flock. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE TIME WHEN JESUS WAS BORN. 

I DO not think you need to be told that it was the 
little baby Jesus whom I mean. You have 
heard how this great emperor, Caesar Augustus, had 
ordered all the people to be taxed, and how, when 
Mary and Joseph were on their way to Jerusalem to 
pay the taxes, the little child was born in the stable 
of an inn at the village of Bethlehem. 

Now, before we begin to talk about the wonderful 
life which came so long ago to bless this world of 
ours, let us stop a little and see what the world was 
doing and thinking at that time, one thousand eight 
hundred and eighty-eight years ago. 

The country of the Jews had different names at 
different times. It is called " Palestine " now, but 
when Jesus was born the northern part of the 
country was called " Galilee," and the southern part, 
where Jerusalem and Bethlehem were, was called 
" Judea." This, you remember, had once been the 
kingdom of Judah. 

Between Galilee and Judea was Samaria, where 
the Samaritans lived. Most of the Jews despised 

239 



24O GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

the Samaritans, and when the} 7 wanted to go from 
Judea to Galilee, they generally went aronnd Sa- 
maria rather than go through it. 

The language spoken by most of the Jews was 
not the old Hebrew which David and the prophets 
had used, but another language somewhat like it. 

All over the country, on the rocky hills, and in 
the green valleys, there were little villages. They 
were very different from the little villages in our 
country, with their broad streets, their rows of 
wooden houses, their little gardens, and sidewalks 
A\dth lines of shade-trees in front of them. 

If you had been a little Jewish boy or girl, and 
had lived eighteen hundred and eighty -eight years 
ago in one of these little villages, this is how it 
would have been : You would have lived in a little 
flat-roofed house, built of rough bricks or stones. 
There would have been only two or three rooms, 
and one of these would have been used as the stable 
for the asses and cows. You would have had no 
glass in the windows, and there would have been no 
sink, no stove, and no fire-place. On cold days there 
would have been a little pan of burning charcoal put 
in the middle of the room, and you and the other 
children would have sat around it on the floor and 
warmed your hands. We should get very tired sit- 
ting cross-legged on the floor, but I suppose little 
John and James, the fisherman's boys, did not mind 
it at all, for they were used to it, and had no chairs. 



THE TIME WHEN JESUS WAS BORN 24 1 

The boys had no knickerbockers, nor shoes, nor 
jackets with pockets in them. They had no stock- 
ings, but wore sandals, and both boys and girls 
dressed much alike in a kind of loose robe. As it was 
generally pretty warm, they did not need to stay in 
the house so much as we do, and sometimes they 
even slept outside on their flat roofs. 

If you had been little Peter, or Andrew, or James, 
or John, or any other little boy, I suppose you would 
have gone to the school, which was in the synagogue, 
or place of worship ; and you would have sat on the 
floor, with rows of other boys, and studied in a very 
noisy fashion. You would have learned a great 
deal about Moses and Ezra, and committed to mem- 
ory what they wrote, and you would have learned to 
write. But there would have been no music, nor 
drawing, nor arithmetic, nor geography, nothing but 
the Jewish Scriptures. 

If you had been little Mary or Elizabeth, or any 
other little girl, you would not have learned much 
about reading and writing, but would have stayed at 
home and learned to spin and cook. 

On Friday night the house would have been 
trimmed and made ready for the Sabbath. When 
Saturday, which was the Jewish Sabbath, came, 
there could be no work, no hard lessons, and no one 
could walk more than a mile. There were many 
strict rules about keeping the Sabbath which would 
seem very strange to us, yet I think, on the whole, it 
was quite a happy day. 



242 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

All the people went to the synagogue and sat on 
the floor, while some one, whose business it was for 
the day, took a roll of parchment and read aloud 
from parts of the law and the writings of the 
prophets ; then he sometimes explained what he had 
read. There was no regular minister, nor sermon, 
and no music. 

The synagogues in the villages were not in the 
least like the Temple at Jerusalem, for there was 
nothing splendid about them, and there were no 
priests nor sacrifices. 

If you had been little Andrew or Mary, and had 
lived in one of these dull little villages, you would 
have been very happy, when, three times a year, it 
came time to go up to Jerusalem to keep the feasts. 
Sometimes these feasts lasted a week or more, and 
the great crowds of people took branches of trees 
and built themselves little huts, in which they slept 
on the hill-sides outside the city walls. 

It must have been as good as Christmas or the 
Fourth of July or Thanksgiving to the little folks, 
to see all these strange sights and new things ! 
There was the beautiful marble Temple, the musi- 
cians, and the processions of priests, and a great deal 
that was very solemn and splendid. 

The old people taught the little ones what all 
this meant, and told them stories about David, and 
Solomon, and the wonderful history of their people. 
They all felt very glad and proud to think that they 



THE TIME WHEN JESUS WAS BORN. 243 

were Jews, and could call themselves the children of 
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. 

Sometimes little Andrew and Mary and the other 
children must have noticed certain men on the street 
and around the Temple, who wore a little box 
tied around their foreheads or on their arms. If 
they had asked what this box was they would have 
found out that it contained some texts from the law, 
which were supposed to be able to keep off danger 
and illness. We know now how useless and foolish 
such things are, but in those times most people be- 
lieved in them. 

There were four classes of men among the Jews, 
of whom the children would soon have learned. One 
of these classes were the " Rabbis." These were 
the teachers of the law, and were the wise men. 
" Rabbi " means master, or lord. Another class 
were the " Scribes," who were somewhat like the 
Rabbis, for they studied and taught the law ; but 
too often they cared a great deal more about copy- 
ing every little word and mark of the law exactly 
right, than they did about loving God. As we 
sometimes say, they cared " more about the letter 
than the spirit of the law." 

The names of the other two classes, which all the 
children must have learned, were the " Pharisees " 
and the " Sadducees." These people did not agree 
with each other in regard to many ideas in their re- 
ligion. The Pharisees believed that all people are 



244 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

immortal, just as Socrates, the Greek, had believed 
and taught three hundred years before. The Sad- 
ducees did not believe this. The Pharisees taught 
that all persons should be just as religious as the 
priests were ; and they were very strict and particu- 
lar about keeping up all the religious customs. They 
often prayed on the streets, and they never thought 
of sitting down to eat until after they had thoroughly 
washed themselves and asked a blessing on the food. 
Many of the Scribes were Pharisees. 

Now, all the great prophets had been dead for 
many years. Neither among the Jews nor the 
Greeks, nor any other people, had there been a great 
religious leader or teacher for hundreds of years. 

The Romans were beginning to disbelieve in their 
gods ; their religion gave them no comfort, for there 
was no love in it. The Jews believed in the one 
true God, and they had come to think of Him as a 
Father; but they did not see that He was the Father 
of all people, as well as of their own little race, as 
the Christians came to believe. Their religion had 
come to be rather dull and lifeless. They often 
thought more of saying long prayers and offering 
sacrifices, than they did about loving their neighbors. 

The hearts of men were hungry and restless ; they 
wanted something better than they had known, but 
they did not know what it was, nor how it was to 
come to them. 

Among the Jews there was a very strong hope 



THE TIME WHEN JESUS WAS BORN. 245 

that some great leader would come who would de- 
feat the Komans who ruled over them, and make 
them a free people. They did not know whether he 
would be a prophet or a king or a great general ; but 
they expected some one who should be their leader 
and guide ; and this one for whom they looked they 
called the " Messiah." 

At last, " in the fulness of time," a little child was 
born. He did not become a great general or a king, 
and he did not bring that glory and honor to the 
Jewish people which they had expected. But he 
brought God to men. He showed men the way to 
become " sons of God and heirs with him." He 
himself was the "Way, the Truth, and the Life," 
and it is ouly by living his kind of a life and follow- 
ing his way, that the best things, the only things for 
which life is worth living, can ever be gained. 

This was not what the Jews had expected ; it was 
infinitely better, though they did not know it. 

His friends who believed in him called him " the 
Christ," which means the same as the Hebrew word 
" Messiah " ; that is, the " Anointed One," or the one 
whom God had sent to lead His people. 




'(ppf 




CHAPTEK XXXIX. 



THE TWO PREACHERS. 



THERE are four little books which tell us about 
the life of Jesus, the Christ. These are often 
called " Gospels," and are bound together in our 
Bibles and put at the beginning of the New Testa- 
ment. They were not written first however, although 
they are put first. They were written many years 
after Jesus' death, when all the rjeople who had seen 
and known him well, were either dead or very old. 

As Jesus himself did not write any books or 
letters which have been saved, almost all we know 
about his life must be learned from these old friends 
of his, who wrote down what they remembered or 
had heard about him. Probably only one or two of 
the four men who wrote about him ever saw him. 

We should be very glad if we could know every 
thing that Jesus did and said, but unfortunately we 
know very little. That little, however, is more im- 
portant than what is found in all the other books of 
the Bible. And because it is the most important, you 
will be sure to read it more than any other part ; so 

246 



THE TWO PREACHERS. 2tf 

I shall not say a great deal about it, for this book is 
written to tell you things, which you will not be so 
likely to know. 

We know almost nothing about the things which 
Jesus did and said when he was a boy. We hear of 
his going with his parents from the little village of 
Nazareth, where he lived, down to Jerusalem to at- 
tend one of the feasts. He was twelve years old 
then. 

He had probably been to the boys' school in the 
synagogue, and had learned by heart many of the 
words of Moses and David and Isaiah. Probably at 
home he had to work pretty hard, and help Joseph, 
who was a carpenter ; and he did not often have a 
chance to talk to the Rabbis and other learned men, 
and to ask them questions. The story tells us that 
when he went to Jerusalem, his one thought was to 
talk with the wise men in the Temple. Most boys 
would have cared more to run about the city and 
see the fine sights, but he cared so much to improve 
the chance to learn something, that he forgot when 
it came time to go home, and stayed behind in the 
Temple. When, after three days, his mother returned 
and found him, she told him how anxious she and his 
father had been about him, fearing he was lost, but 
he said in surprise : " Did you not know that I must 
be in my Father's house ? " Then he went back with 
them to Nazareth, and we know scarcely any thing 
about him for the next eighteen years. 



248 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

When Jesus was about thirty years old, he 
left Nazareth for a little while, and went down to 
the valley of the Jordan River to hear a wonderful 
preacher who was drawing great crowds out of the 
cities to hear him. 

This preacher was John, called "the Baptist," 
because he baptized those who believed his teaching. 
He was a strange, wild-looking man, probably some- 
what like the prophet Elijah, who had lived many 
hundred years before. He ate locusts and wild 
honey and wore a rough garment of camel's hair. 

John was a brave man who spoke out boldly. He 
warned people to repent, and told them that their 
sins would be punished. He despised the efforts 
which the Pharisees made to appear very pious, when 
at heart they were selfish, and he called them hard 
names. He told them not to feel proud because they 
were the children of Abraham. Those who heard 
him were startled at his earnestness and his stern 
words, and asked him what they should do. 

He told them they must begin to live honest, true 
lives. If they had been selfish and had kept more 
money or goods than they needed, while others had 
not enough, they must begin to give ; if they had been 
sharp at a bargain, they must now deal fairly ; if 
they had been harsh or cruel, they must become 
kind and gentle. 

John expected that the Messiah would come, and 
he told the people that after him would come one so 



THE TWO PREACHERS. 249 

much greater than he, that he should not be worthy 
to unloose his shoes. 

After a while John spoke so boldly against all 
wrong-doers, even against the ruler, Herod, that he 
was angry with him and shut him up in prison. 

Before this time, however, Jesus had heard John 
preach and had been baptized by him in the river 
Jordan. After this, Jesus went off alone by himself 
into a wilderness and stayed many days fasting and 
praying, and thinking over the kind of life which he 
should choose to live. Should he win honor and 
power by living a sinful, selfish life, by serving the 
devil, as we sometimes say, or should he give up every 
thing for truth, and choose the hard, painful, self- 
denying life ? Should he choose to make himself a 
great, famous leader, and bring honor and glory to 
his race, and so be praised by all men ? or should he 
be content to do his Father's will and be "despised 
and rejected of men " ? We must not imagine that 
Jesus could have been tempted to do wrong with 
any of the common temptations that most men have. 
The kind of temptation which could come to one as 
pure and Godlike as Jesus, is something that we can 
hardly understand, just as a savage whose tempta- 
tions are to murder and to steal would not be able 
to understand the kind of temptations which a sweet, 
noble saint might have. 

Whatever this story of the temptation may mean, 
it was certainly a great and bitter struggle from 



250 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

which Jesus came away the conqueror. It was not 
the last nor the only temptation which he had, but 
this, the greatest one, had been mastered, and all 
those that came after him must have seemed easier. 
The choice of his life was made ; joyfully he went 
about his work, and calmly looked forward to the 
labor and pain and anguish which were to come to 
him. 

After Jesus had chosen his work, he returned to 
his home in Galilee and began to teach and preach 
somewhat as John had done. John heard about it 
in prison, and sent to him, saying : " Art thou he 
that should come, or look we for another ? " mean- 
ing, " Art thou the Messiah, the Christ, or not ? " 

Jesus did not send back a direct answer, but told 
John's friends to go back and tell him how he was 
curing the sick, raising the dead, and preaching the 
gospel to the poor. Then Jesus began to tell the 
people what a great man John was ; he said that no 
man had been greater than this fearless preacher. 

John had lived in a very plain, simple way, hardly 
allowing himself any of the comforts of life, while 
Jesus, on the other hand, dressed and ate and lived 
very much as other people did. 

Yet the mass of the people did not understand 
either of them, but found fault with both. Because 
John lived differently from other people, they said 
he had a " devil " ; and because Jesus did not separate 
himself from the world, but went to weddings and 



THE TWO PREACHERS. 25 1 

drank wine, as every one in those days did, and be- 
cause he made friends with many who were not 
good, they said : " He is gluttonous and a wine- 
bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." The 
publicans were tax collectors, and were sometimes 
so unjust that the people hated them. 

One day after John the Baptist had lain in prison 
a long time, King Herod had a feast in his palace. It 
was his birthday, and to please him, a young girl 
came in and danced before him. 

Herod was so greatly pleased with her that he 
promised to surely give her any thing that she asked 
for. I suppose that he did not dream what a terrible 
thing she would want. The girl went out and asked 
her mother, who was the wife of Herod, what she 
should ask him to do for her. 

Her mother's name was Herodias. She hated John 
because he had found fault with her for her wrong- 
doing ; so she told her daughter to ask for the head 
of John the Baptist. 

The king was very sorry when he heard of it, but 
was ashamed to break the bad promise which he 
had made, so he sent to the prison and had the great 
preacher beheaded. Then the disciples of John, 
mourning for their master, took his body, and after 
burying it, went and told Jesus. 

Jesus knew that if he dared to preach boldly as 
John had done, his end would be the same, but he 
did not stop nor turn back from what he had begun. 



2 52 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

His heart ached for the poor, ignorant people who 
flocked about him ; he said they were like " sheep 
without a shepherd." 

We do not know exactly how long Jesus went 
about preaching, healing the sick, and doing good, 
after the time of his great temptation in the wilder- 
ness. It certainly was not over three years, yet it 
was long enough to start such a change in the 
thoughts of men, that the whole world has come to 
feel the effects of it, and we count Christ's coming 
as the most important thing in all history. 

The different men who wrote the story of his life, 
did not tell us where or when many things happened, 
so we do not know so much about them as we would 
like to. 

Part of the time Jesus preached in Galilee among 
his old neighbors. Many of them did not think much 
of him. They said he was only a carpenter's son 
and had never done any thing wonderful before, and 
so could not know much. One day he stood up in 
their synagogue and taught them in such a wise, 
strong way, that they were all astonished. They 
were soon angry with him, however, for he spoke 
truth which they did not want to hear, and they 
took him to the edge of a hill, meaning to throw 
him over ; but when they looked in his face, they 
must have seen something there that startled and 
awed them, for they drew back and dared not lay 
their hands on him. 



THE TWO PREACHERS. 253 

John had disciples who followed him about and 
listened to his teaching, and so did Jesus also. They 
were nearly all poor men, some of them fishermen ; 
among these were two brothers, named James and 
John, and two other brothers named Andrew, and 
Simon, afterwards called Peter. One of them was a 
tax collector named Matthew. 

They left their work and their families and fol- 
lowed Jesus wherever he went, for he taught them 
that every one must be willing to leave home and 
friends, if need be, and every thing that was dearest, 
for the sake of the truth. 

Sometimes he preached in the synagogues of the 
villages where he was staying, but generally he 
spoke out of doors, on the hillside, in a boat by the 
seashore, or under some tree by the roadside — where- 
ever the crowds gathered. 

He loved to have little children come to him and 
climb up on his knees, and when his friends were 
afraid they would trouble him, and tried to send 
them away, he said : " Let the little children come 
unto me, and do not forbid them ; for of such is the 
kingdom of God." Then he took them in his arms 
and blessed them. 

Here is a little song which tells about Jesus and 
the children. 



The Master has come over Jordan,' 
Said Hannah, the mother, one day ; 



254 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

u He is healing the people who throng him, 

With a touch of his fingers, they say. 
And now I will carry the children, 

Little Rachel, and Samuel and John, 
And dear little Esther, the baby, 
For the Master to look upon.' 

" The father then looked at her kindly, 

And said as he tenderly smiled : 
' Now who but a fond, loving mother 

Would think of a project so wild ? 
If the children were tortured by demons, 

Or dying of fever, 't were well, 
Or had they the taint of the leper, 

Like many among us who dwell.' 



" ' Nay, nay, do not hinder me, Nathan, 

I feel such a burden of care ; 
And if to the Master I tell it, 

That burden he '11 help me to bear, 
If he lay but his hands on the children, 

My heart will be lighter, I know, 
For a blessing for ever and ever, 

Will follow them as they go.' 

" So over the mountains of Judah, 

Along with the vines all so green, 
With Esther asleep on her bosom, 

And Rachel her brothers between ; 
With the people who hung on his teaching, 

Or waited a touch or a word, 
Through the row of proud Pharisees hasting, 

She pressed to the feet of the Lord. 



THE TWO PREACHERS. 2$$ 

' Now why shouldst thou hinder the Master/ 

Said Peter, ' with children like these ? 
Thou knowest from morn until evening, 

He is teaching, and healing disease.' 
Said Jesus : ' Forbid not the children, 

Permit them to come unto me.' 
Then he took in his arms little Esther, 

And Rachel he sat on his knee. 

The care-stricken heart of the mother 

Was lifted all sorrow above ; 
His hand kindly laid on the children, 

He blest them with holiest love, 
And said of the babes in his bosom, 

' Of such are the kingdom of heaven.' 
Then strength for all duty and trial, 

That hour to her spirit was given." 



CHAPTER XL. 



THE CHKIST. 



THE most interesting stories of Jesus are those 
that tell of his miracles, of his giving sight to 
the blind, casting out devils, and doing many other 
wonderful things. But although these are the most 
interesting, they are not the most important stories. 

As I said once before, there is no miracle more 
wonderful than many common things which happen 
every day, and which we do not wonder about just 
because they are so common. Think how wonder- 
ful it is that we can speak through the telephone 
and be heard many miles away ; and that a tiny 
seed, by the help of the earth and the light, air, and 
water, can be changed into a great tree ! 

We read in the ancient writings that many other 
people besides Jesus performed miracles. They 
were not always the best and noblest men. One of 
the old Hebrew stories tells us of some Egyptians at 
the court of Pharaoh who changed their rods into 
serpents, and this is as wonderful as any miracle of 
which we read in the New Testament. 

256 



THE CHRIST. 2$? 

Jesus himself told his disciples that they should 
do greater things than he had done ; so we see that 
the true reason why all the world should love and 
follow him, and find in him a Saviour, is not because 
he did wonderful miracles, but is on account of what 
he taught and because of what he was. 

The parables which Jesus told, and the reports of 
the conversations which he had with his disciples 
are very important, and I wish we all knew them by 
heart. 

The writers of the four gospels tell us of about 
thirty parables which Jesus spoke. These were 
little stories told to teach some great truth. Among 
the most interesting are those of the Prodigal Son, 
the Good Samaritan, the Sower with his Seed, and 
the Pharisee and the Publican. You must be sure 
to know these at least. All the parables are so 
beautiful and simple that you can easily understand 
them in the words of Jesus himself. I need not tell 
them to you. 

Among the most beautiful and important sayings 
of Jesus are those which are gathered together from 
his different conversations, called the " Sermon on 
the Mount." The first part is called " The Beati- 
tudes," and evey one should know these by heart. 
They begin, " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs 
is the kingdom of heaven " ; this, you know, means 
that those who are not proud and selfish, but gentle 
and humble, shall, even now, while on this earth, 



258 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THLNKERS. 

have the truest happiness. As Jesus said : " The 
kingdom of God is within you." 

He was always teaching that riches and power 
could do nothing to make a man reach what was 
really the highest and best. It was only by know- 
ing the Heavenly Father and by growing to be like 
him that men could ever have " heaven " within them. 

Jesus was always poor. As he said of himself, he 
" had not where to lay his head," and when night 
came, he had nowhere to go unless some stranger 
asked him to his home. 

There were a few homes where he was always 
welcome and where he gladly went. One was the 
home of Martha and Mary and their brother Laza- 
rus, in the little town of Bethany, near Jerusalem. 
But Jesus did not have much time for friendly visits 
such as he loved ; his life was too busy and earnest 
to be spent like that of other men. 

He loved the poor and ignorant people who 
flocked about him, and was always tender even to 
the most wicked one, if he was sorry and wanted to 
begin to live a better life. But he was very stern 
and severe, as John the Baptist had been, towards 
mean, selfish people who made a great pretence of 
being good. 

The ruler of a synagogue once blamed him be- 
cause he had healed a sick woman on the Sabbath 
day. Jesus knew that this same ruler led his ox and 
ass to water on the Sabbath day, and calling him a 




JCSUS AND MARY, 
259 



26o GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

a hypocrite, " lie sternly asked him if it were not as 
important that this poor woman, who had suffered 
for eighteen years, should be healed, as that animals 
should be cared for. 

There are several other stories which show us how 
much Jesus was criticised because he did not ob- 
serve all the strict Jewish traditions about those 
things which were to be done or not to be done on 
the Sabbath. He was vexed and sad at heart to see 
how stupidly and blindly the people tried to obey 
the exact words of the law, and forgot the justice 
and love for which the law was made, and he said, 
u The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for 
the Sabbath." 

On one of his visits to Jerusalem as he went to the 
Temple, he saw there crowds of men selling sheep, 
and oxen and doves to those who wished to buy 
them for sacrifices, and also the tables of the men 
who sat with different kinds of money before them 
and made change. They were all carrying on their 
business inside the Temple, and of course there was 
a oreat deal of noise and confusion as there is in a 
market-place. Jesus was very indignant at this, and 
making a little whip of small cords, he commanded 
them all to take their things away, and drove them 
from the Temple, saying, " Make not my Father's 
house a house of trade. It is written : ' My house 
shall be called the house of prayer,' but ye make it a 
den of robbers." 



THE CHRIST. 26 1 

At another time Jesus was in the Temple and 
saw the rich people putting their offerings into the 
treasury, somewhat as in our churches people put 
their money into the contribution -box. At last a poor 
widow came, and she put in two mites, which is less 
than one cent, but Jesus, knowing the love that was 
in the poor woman's heart, said that she had given 
more than they all, for she gave all that she had, 
while the rich, although they had actually given 
more money, did not really give so much, for they 
did not feel the loss of it at all, since they had an 
abundance left. 

We generally think of Jesus as too meek and 
gentle ever to say any thing severe. But never did 
any one speak out more sternly against all pretence 
and meanness than he did. " Fools, hypocrites, 
blind guides, serpents, vipers," he called the scribes 
and Pharisees. 

Sometimes when they heard these burning words of 
rebuke and saw the light of indignation in those clear, 
honest eyes, it made them turn away ashamed and 
sorry. One of the Pharisees named Nicodemus 
longed to know more of this wonderful teacher. 
He did not like to be seen talking to him by day, 
so he went to him by night. The Master saw that 
Nicodemus was different from most of the other 
Pharisees, and he began at once talking earnestly to 
him. He saw how completely this man needed to 
be changed in all his thoughts and feelings, and he 



262 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

said, "Except a man be born again he cannot see 
the kingdom of God." It was hard for Mcodemus 
to understand this; perhaps he never did quite 
understand it, but he never forgot it. He must 
have loved Jesus, for afterwards when he was to be 
brought before the rulers to be tried, Nicodemus 
alone among them all tried to help him ; and later, 
when the trial and cruel death had come, it was 
this same Pharisee who brought much precious and 
costly ointment to put upon the dead body when it 
was laid in the tomb. 

One day, Jesus was dining at the house of a 
Pharisee named Simon, and a woman who had led a 
wicked life came in, hoping she might see the Mas- 
ter. As she heard his gentle words and looked into 
his pure face, her tears began to fall. She thought 
of her past sinful life, and longed to be better and to 
show him her love. Stooping down she tenderly 
anointed his feet with precious ointment which she 
brought, and with her long hair wiped away the 
tears as they fell. 

The Pharisees looked at this with astonishment, 
thinking Jesus could not know what kind of a 
woman she was, or he would not have let her touch 
him. But to Jesus the love of this poor woman 
was far sweeter than all the honors which any great 
man could pay him, and he said to her, " Thy sins 
are forgiven." 

Several other beautiful stories have come down 



THE CHRIST. . 263 

to us which show how tender Jesus was to those 
whom every one else despised. 

One day, when he was travelling through Samaria, 
he sat down beside a well to rest. A Samaritan 
woman came to draw water, and they began to talk 
together. He asked her to give him a drink of 
water, and she was surprised, for the Jews disliked 
the Samaritans so much that they would hardly 
speak to them. As he felt the cool water on his 
thirsty lips, lie looked at the woman who stood be- 
fore him and saw how ignorant and sinful she was. 
He longed to give the water of life to her thirsty 
soul. And he said : " Every one that drinketh of this 
water shall thirst again ; but whosoever drinketh of 
the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; 
but the water which I shall give him shall become 
in him a well of water springing up unto eternal 
life." 

As he went on talking in his tender, earnest voice, 
the woman listened, trying to understand the strange 
words which he spoke ; she wondered if this could 
be the Christ, the Messiah whom all had expected. 
And Jesus said to her : "I that speak unto thee am 
he." 

His disciples, who had been away for a little 
while, now came back, and were much surprised 
that he should talk with such a woman. They 
brought him food which they had just bought, and 
begged him to eat. But the thought of the great 



264 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

work which he was to do so filled his mind that he 
was no longer hungry ; he could not eat, and said to 
them : "I have meat to eat that ye know not of. My 
meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to 
accomplish his work." 

This thought never left him by night or day. He 
had come to save men from their sins, to bring the 
kingdom of God into their hearts, to show them 
what God was, and to teach even the worst of sin- 
ners that he, too, if he only would, might become 
God's child. 

Alone upon the mountain at night, even until 
break of day, he talked with his Father, and gained 
wisdom and strength for what he had given himself 
to do. 




CHAPTEE XLI. 

THE MASTER AND HIS FOLLOWERS. 

AMONG the twelve disciples, Peter, James, and 
John were Jesus' special friends. He often 
took them with him when he left the others and 
went away from the crowds who followed him. 

Although they knew him best, they often misun- 
derstood him, for his words had a deeper meaning 
than they could grasp ; but years afterward, when 
he was gone, they remembered many things which 
he had said, and his words came to have a new 
meaning to them. 

He told them that he was the " bread of life " ; 
they thought he spoke of real bread, and did not 
know what he meant ; just as the Samaritan woman 
did not understand him when he told her that he 
would give her to drink of the " water of life," and 
she would never thirst. They came to see at last 
that he was speaking of what would give life to the 
soul instead of the body. 

To those who did not see the deeper meaning of 
his teaching, he sometimes said they had eyes but 
did not see and ears but did not hear. 

265 



266 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

The truths that Jesus gave his disciples were not 
always new. He was glad to gather up the best 
teachings which had been in the world before he 
came, and to teach them again to his disciples. He 
said he did not come to destroy the teachings of the 
good men who had lived before his time, but he 
came to " fulfil " them ; that is, to fill them full with 
new life and meaning. 

The beautiful Golden Rule, which tells us that 
we should do to others what we wish them to do to 
us, was not entirely new to the world. It had been 
taught before, and he taught it again to his disci- 
ples because it was so important and true. 

Once, when they asked him to teach them how to 
pray, he gave them in simple words a little prayer 
containing the very best thoughts that had been 
used in the prayers of the Rabbis before his time. 
It was very different from the long prayers which 
the Pharisees loved to pray while standing at the 
street corners that they might be seen by every one. 

All the disciples except one, named Judas Iscariot, 
loved Jesus and believed in him. 

The high priests and the rulers of the Jews had al- 
ways disliked Jesus. They did not understand him 
in the least. They feared the power which he was 
beginning to have over the minds of his followers, 
so they tried to put a stop to his work. 

They made a bargain, with Judas, who was a 
traitor, that they would pay him thirty pieces of sil- 



THE MASTER AND HIS FOLLOWERS. 267 

ver if lie would tell them where Jesus was and give 
them a good chance to arrest him. Judas was a 
mean, deceitful man, who cared more for money than 
for the life of his best friend ; so he told them, where 
Jesus was to be. 

One evening in spring-time, Jesus gathered with 
his disciples in a large upper room in a house in Je- 
rusalem, and ate the last supper which they ever had 
together. It was the night when the Jewish feast 
called the Passover was kept. 

Once before this, the disciples had disputed among 
themselves as to which of them should be the great- 
est, and Jesus had told them that he who would be 
greatest must serve the others, and he had said : u I 
am among you as he that serveth." 

So, now, as he knew he must soon leave them, he 
felt that they needed to have this lesson fixed in 
their minds again, and after the supper, taking a towel 
and a basin, he went from one to the other and 
washed and wiped their feet. They looked on, won- 
dering greatly to see him who was their Lord and 
Master serving them ; but he said : u If I, your Lord 
and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to 
wash one another's feet. For I have given you an 
example, that ye should do as I have done to you." 

As Jesus looked upon these friends whom he was 
so soon to leave, his heart was filled with divine pity 
and love, and he spoke to them the tenderest and 
sweetest words ever written. 



268 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

He knew that, after lie left them, they would be 
separated, and often made to suffer for his sake ; but 
he told them they should not be left comfortless, for 
the heavenly Father would send His Holy Spirit to 
comfort and to teach them, and to tell them what to 
say in the time of trial. 

He knew that differences might arise among them, 
and he begged them always to be true to one 
another and to him. " Even as the Father hath loved 
me," he said, " I also have loved you ; abide ye in my 
love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide 
in my love, even as I have kept my Father's com- 
mandments and abide in his love. This is my com- 
mandment, that ye love one another as I have loved 
you. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated 
me before it hated you. Remember the word which 
I said unto you, a servant is not greater than his 
lord ; if they persecuted me, they will also persecute 
you. He that hateth me, hateth my Father also." 

Jesus knew that his disciples must continue the 
work which he came to do, and so, although he knew 
that trouble and pain were soon to come to them, 
when he lifted his voice in prayer to Grod for them, he 
did not ask that they should be taken out of the 
world and spared the suffering, but he asked that 
they might be kept from evil. 

As the Father had sent him, so he sent them, and 
he prayed that they might be united and like one 
person, in their thoughts and purposes, just as he 
and his Father were one. 



THE MASTER AND HIS FOLLOWERS. 269 

Tenderly and pityingly he looked upon these men, 
who loved him, and who were soon to see him torn 
from them and made to suffer a cruel and shameful 
death. He knew that he should be left alone, with 
no earthly friend to help him, but he said : " And 
yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. 
These things I have spoken unto you that ye might 
have peace ; in the world ye shall have trouble, but 
be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." 

These wonderful words, spoken more than eigh- 
teen hundred years ago, have been read by many 
millions of men and women and children since then ; 
sometimes they have been read carelessly and 
thoughtlessly by those whose eyes were shut and 
whose ears were deaf to their true meaning. Some- 
times they have been read by noble men and wo- 
men who have lost every thing that was dear to them 
in the world, and who have yet learned, by the 
help of Jesus, to feel that they were not alone, for 
the Father was with them. Only to those who 
have had a deep experience, whose eyes have been 
opened to see God and to know him, can these words 
have any real meaning. Yet it is possible for even 
a child to see more in them than many a man does, 
no matter how old or learned he may be. 

After Jesus and his disciples had finished their 
supper and had sung a hymn, they went to a 
garden called Gethseinane, outside the walls of the 
city. Judas was not Avith them ; he had left them 



270 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

when they were at table, and gone to tell the rulers 
where Jesus could be found. 

Jesus left his disciples and went off alone a little 
way, asking them to remain and watch. Then in a 
great agony of spirit, he prayed to his Father that 
he might be spared what was to come to him : ' : Nev- 
ertheless," he added, " not my will, but thine be 
done." As he prayed, great drops of bloody sweat 
ran down his face. He was thinking not merely of 
the pain which he should bear, but of the sins of the 
people, for which he was to suffer. 

Then he came back and found that the friends 
whom he had asked to watch were sleeping, for they 
were very tired. He sadly asked : " Could ye not watch 
with me one hour ? " Then seeing how they needed 
the rest, he kindly added : " The spirit indeed is will- 
ing, but the flesh is weak." 

Just then came Judas with the soldiers whom he 
had brought to take Jesus, and going up to him, he 
kissed him, to show the soldiers which one he was. 
Then the soldiers took him, and all the disciples 
were frightened and ran away. 

Peter had boasted that very evening at supper, 
that he would always be true to Jesus and never be 
ashamed to be called his friend. Now when Jesus 
was suddenly arrested and taken away, Peter fol- 
lowed at a distance and went into the house of the 
high-priest where Jesus was, to see what would be 
done with him. 



THE MASTER AND HIS FOLLOWERS. 2?I 

He saw them strike Jesus and spit upon him and 
say that he ought to be put to death. Suddenly a 
girl came and said to him, "Thou also wast with 
Jesus the Galilean." But he denied it before them 
all, saying, " I know not what thou say est." Twice 
again that same evening others said that he had 
been in the company of their prisoner, but Peter, 
now thoroughly frightened, fearing also for his own 
life, stoutly denied that he knew Jesus. 

Then Jesus turned and looked at Peter. That 
look went to his heart, and he remembered how 
Jesus had told him that he would prove to be weak 
when the temptation came. He turned away in 
shame and sorrow, and going out, " wept bitterly." 

All the friends of Jesus had left him, and he was 
now alone with the men who hated him, and whose 
scornful, angry eyes glared at him as he stood before 
them. 

Here we must leave him, for his life as a preacher 
and teacher was now ended, and it is of this part of 
his life only that I have tried to tell you. 

All of his life that came before this, of which I 
I have not told, and all that came after this, you 
will read and re-read many times and always find the 
story more and more wonderful. 

You can surely see, even from the little which I 
have told you, that in Jesus the world found one 
who was far diiferent from Socrates, or John the 
Baptist, or other noble martyrs whom we love to 



2^2 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

honor. For to know u the truth as it is in Jesus " is 
to know the best that God has ever taught to men. 
In his own life Jesus showed the life of God to us 
and taught us that we too, in some measure, might 
become little Christs, as it were, and show the 
Father to those of his children who do not yet know 
him. 




CHAPTEE XLIL 



THE FIRST MISSIONARY. 



YOU remember I told you that although the four 
Gospels, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 
were placed at the beginning of the New Testament, 
they were not written until after some of the other 
books, and none were written until some time after 
the death of Jesus. 

Probably the first writing which we have in the 
New Testament is a little letter written by a man 
who was not one of the twelve disciples, who had 
never seen Jesus, but who did more than any one 
who ever lived to make the new religion, which came 
to be called " Christianity," take the place of the 
religions of the Jews, and Greeks, and Romans. 

This man was named Saul, but afterwards he 
called himself Paul, and that is what I shall call 
him in this short story of his life. 

He was born in a little city called Tarsus, which 
was not in Palestine, where most of the Jews lived, 
but was between Palestine and Greece on the sea- 
shore. 



273 



2/4 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

All Jewish boys were obliged to learn a trade, so 
that they could support themselves, and Paul learned 
the trade of tent-making. 

He was brought up a Pharisee and was very 
strict indeed about fasting and keeping all the rules 
and customs of the Pharisees. When he was about 
a dozen years old probably, he was sent away to 
Jerusalem to school. He had been taught the his- 
tory of his people, and he probably cared for it 
vastly more than any American boy cares for our 
history. 

He must have been very glad to see the City of 
David and the Temple that he had heard so much 
about, and to walk the streets, where if every stone 
could speak, it would tell a famous story. 

There was a very wise rabbi, named Gamaliel, 
with whom Paul studied the Jewish law. He knew 
the ancient Hebrew and the Greek, and doubtless 
also the Latin language, which the Romans spoke. 
He became a much more learned man than any of 
the twelve disciples. How long he stayed in Jerusa- 
lem, and whether he heard John the Baptist or 
Jesus, who were then living, we do not know. 

When the first apostles began to preach about 
Christ, for a time no one paid much attention to 
them, but soon the new teaching began to make trou- 
ble. One of them, named Stephen, who was not one 
of the twelve disciples, but was a great apostle and 
preacher, was seized by those who hated his teach- 



276 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

ings, and brought before a council to be tried for 
his life. He stood up before all his judges, and 
boldly accused them of their sins, and said their 
fathers before them had persecuted the prophets, 
and they were now ready to do the same thing. 

Then they rushed upon him angrily, and taking 
him out of the city, stoned him to death. 

As Jesus on the cross prayed, " Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do," so Stephen, 
the first martyr for the new faith, as he was dying, 
prayed, " Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." 

Paul hated the preachers of this new religion, 'for 
he thought they were wicked men whom he did 
right to punish. He had given consent to Stephen's 
death, but although for some time after this he went 
on treating the new converts cruelly, he never for- 
got how he had helped to put this noble man to 
death, and afterwards, when he himself became a 
follower of Christ, he called himself " the chief of 
sinners," as he thought of the harm which he had 
done. 

One day, as he was on his way to a city called 
Damascus, a vision of the Lord appeared to him, 
and he fell to the earth in terror and astonishment. 
The voice of God spoke to him. Just what the 
vision was we do not know, but it worked a won- 
derful change in this man who had but just now 
been so fierce in persecution. 

He himself became a believer in Christ and began 



THE FIRST MISSIONARY. 2/7 

to preach the very things for which he had put 
others into prison, and this, of course, was a great 
surprise to every one. Before beginning on his 
work of preaching he went away, and for three 
years we hear nothing of him. Perhaps he wanted 
this time for studying and preparing for his work 
as an apostle. 

When he did begin to preach he found that not 
only the Jews hated him and wanted to kill him, 
but even the apostles of the new faith, whom he 
now met for the first time, did not believe in him. 

They soon became friends, however, for he showed 
them how he had been converted, and how earnestly 
he meant to preach that Jesus was the Christ. 

He soon found that it was not safe or best for 
him to remain in Jerusalem, and besides, he had 
made up his mind to be a missionary to the Gentiles, 
that is, to the Greeks and other people who did not 
believe the religion of the Jews. He went back to 
his old home at Tarsus and began to preach there. 
Then he set out in company with an apostle named 
Barnabas, and went about from city to city, and 
preached, and started little churches which soon be- 
gan to take the name of Christ and call themselves 
Christian. 

Paul was probably a short, plain-looking man. 
We read that he had some bodily trouble ; whether 
it was nearsightedness, or lameness, or stammering, 
or what it was, we do not know. He prayed that 



278 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR UTILE 'THINKERS. 

he might be freed from it, but he never was, and so 
he tried to bear it patiently, and in spite of it he 
made himself a great power, so that men forgot it 
and thought only of his burning words of truth and 
wisdom. 

After a while he made another journey with a 
preacher named Silas. This time he went farther 
west and came among the Greeks, and went to their 
beautiful city of Athens, where you remember 
Socrates had lived more than four hundred years be- 
fore. 

Athens was filled with fine temples and statues of 
the gods and goddesses, of whom I told you in the 
chapter on the Greeks. 

Everywhere, as Paul went about, he met polite, 
well-dressed, intelligent people. They were not 
believers in the true God, and yet they were not at 
all like the ignorant heathen to whom we send mis- 
sionaries on the Morning Star. Paul knew how 
to talk to them much better than Peter or James or 
the other disciples would have done, because he 
knew their language and customs and ideas, and no 
doubt had read many of their famous books. 

The people were always interested to hear new 
things, and were curious to see 'what Paul would 
say ; so, one day, standing on the top of a little hill 
which was named after Mars, the Greek god of war, 
he talked plainly to them. He said as he passed 
along the street he had seen an altar on which was 



THE FIRST MISSIONARY. 279 

inscribed : " To the Unknown God." It seems the 
Greeks were so afraid some god would be forgotten 
and not have an altar, that they thought it safest to 
put up this one. Paul said he would tell them 
about this God whom they did not know. 

He told them that in God " we live, and move, 
and have our being ! " and that, as one of their own 
poets had said, " We are also his children." Then 
he added, if we are his children, we ought not to 
imagine that God is like an image of gold or silver 
which man has made. In past time God had excused 
them on account of their ignorance, but now they 
had heard the truth they must begin new lives. 

When Paul went back to Jerusalem after his sec- 
ond journey, he knew that trouble awaited him, for 
the Jews were very angry against him. 

His friends in the town of Ephesus, where he had 
been preaching, who had learned to love him dearly, 
followed him down to the sea-shore, where he was to 
go on board the ship, and kissed him while the tears 
ran down their cheeks, for they never expected to 
see him again. 

Paul had not thought it was necessary to teach 
the Gentiles all the Jewish laws, though he still 
observed them himself. The Jew r s at Jerusalem 
were very indignant at this, and when Paul reached 
there they would have killed him if the soldiers had 
not protected him and allowed him to speak and 
explain about himself When the Roman soldiers 



280 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

found out that he was a free-born Roman, and had 
special rights on that account, they did not dare to 
punish him, but let him go. 

Forty of the Jews were so angry against Paul that 
they promised each other not to eat nor drink until 
they had killed him. The Roman captain learned 
of this, and sent a strong guard of soldiers to take 
Paul away to the governor, who was named Felix. 

Here he remained a prisoner for two years. It 
must have been a hard thing for the young Chris- 
tians in the new churches to feel that this dear 
friend, who was like a father to them, could no 
longer help and teach them. 

We must remember that at this time the New 
Testament was not written, and the converts had 
very little to help them in the new faith. 

If Paul had waited a little longer he might have 
been set free ; but he had sent word that, as he had 
the rights of a Roman, he wished to be sent to be 
tried at Rome before the emperor. 

So he started on his third long journey, this time 
going as a prisoner, and sailing much farther west 
than he had ever been before. 

Nowadays, on a fast steamer, it would take but a 
few days to go from Palestine to Rome, but in a 
little slow sailing-vessel like the one in which Paul 
went, which was driven about by winds that blew 
against them, it would take a long time. Before the 
voyage was half over the little vessel was wrecked 



THE FIRST MISSIONARY. 28 1 

near an island, but all on board were fortunately 
saved, having swum to shore or floated on planks 
and pieces of the ship. 

A friend who travelled with Paul has written a 
very interesting account of this exciting event, which 
came so near ending the life of the great missionary 
before his work was done. 

It was several months before Panl reached the 
great city of Rome. His friends in Rome heard of 
his approach, and went out of the city to meet him 
coming as a prisoner under the guard of soldiers. 

There was a little church of Christians in Rome 
before Paul reached there, and he had already writ- 
ten them a long letter, that is printed in our New 
Testament, with other letters which he wrote to 
different churches, which have been preserved. This 
letter that he had written to his friends at Rome is 
one of the longest and most important which he 
wrote. When you are ten years older you will want 
to study it a great deal ; it is about the noblest and 
grandest letter ever written. 

When Paul saw these friends coming out to meet 
him on the road, it must have been a great comfort 
to him to think that in this immense, heathen city 
full of temples and palaces, and of hard, cruel men 
who would sometime be glad to see him torn in 
pieces, he yet knew a few who loved and cared for 
him and for the Christ whom he had come to preach. 

For two years he remained nnder the guard of a 



282 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

soldier as a prisoner, but he was kept in a private 
house and his friends were allowed to come and see 
hiin. 

There were a number of Jews living in Rome, 
and he preached Christ to them, but many of them 
did not believe what he taught. He found gener- 
ally that the Greeks and Romans and other Gentiles 
were more ready to become Christians than were the 
Jews. 

Afterwards Paul was probably set free and trav- 
elled on farther west, working always for his Master 
and ready at any moment to die bravely for the 
truth. "We know very little about the last of his 
life ; it is probable that he was put to death very 
cruelly by order of the Roman emperor named Nero, 
who was about the worst and most cruel man who 
ever lived. 

The story of Paul's life we learn chiefly from a 
book called u The Acts of the Apostles " ; but from 
his letters we learn the most that we know about 
what he thought and preached. He had begun life 
as a strict Jew, but at last he broke away almost en- 
tirely from the old law. He felt that, as a disciple 
of Christ, he was freed from it. In writing a letter 
to certain Gentiles, he tells them it was of no conse- 
quence for them to follow the law of the Jews ; that 
had been a good thing in the past, for it had helped 
the world to come to the truth, but now Christ had 
come there was no longer any need of it. They 



THE FIRST MISSIONARY. 283 

ought to serve God now by following Christ and be- 
coming like him, rather than by offering sacrifices 
and keeping the fast days and Sabbaths as the Jews 
had done. 

Over and over again he begged them to be kind 
and good and to " bear one another's burdens," and 
so fulfil the law of Christ, which was far higher than 
most of the old Jewish laws. All the law, as he 
taught, amounted simply to this : " Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself." 

Paul not only preached this, but he practised it 
also. He loved others better than himself. He was 
often hungry and cold. He was cruelly beaten, he 
was bound in chains and put into dark dungeons, but 
although his body suffered, his heart was full of 
joy because he, like his Master, was to be "made 
perfect through suffering." 

Other men have suffered bravely for the sake of 
the truth, but since his time, I know of no man that 
has lived who has been so helpful to the world as 
this noble Christian hero and martyr whom we have 
come to call Saint Paul. 





CHAPTER XLIII. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIANS. 



AFTER Jesus had left them, the disciples began 
to teach and preach as he had commanded. 
One of the first things they did was to choose an- 
other disciple to take the place of Judas, who had 
felt so badly about the terrible thing which he had 
done that he had killed himself. 

One day, when the twelve were all together, not 
long after this, the Spirit of God came upon them 
as it had never come before, and they went out and 
began preaching with such earnestness that thou- 
sands were at once converted. 

Peter, who had denied that he knew Jesus, and 
had afterwards been so bitterly sorry for it, was one 
of the foremost and boldest of them all. 

One day he had a wonderful dream. He was up 
on the flat roof of the house at noontime, and while 
waiting for dinner, fell asleep. He dreamed that he 
saw a great many animals let down out of the sky 
before him, and a voice told him to kill and eat them. 
But they were animals which the Jews had been 

284 



THE FIRST CHRISTIANS. 285 

forbidden to eat, so Peter answered that he could 
not do it, for they were " common and unclean." 
Then he seemed to hear a voice answering, and say- 
ing, that what God had made clean, he must not 
think was unclean. This dream made a great im- 
pression on Peter. He felt it was meant to teach 
him that God cared for the Gentiles just as much as 
for the Jews, and that no class of people should be 
looked down upon. 

Peter came to see what perhaps no Jew before 
him had ever seen, that in every nation whoever 
pleased God and did right was accepted by Him. 

From that time the apostles began to preach to the 
Gentiles, and found them generally more ready to 
listen to them than were the Jews. 

Neither Peter nor John nor any of the twelve dis- 
ciples ever became such a great preacher as St. Paul; 
lie was a larger-minded man than any of them. 

At first the Christians at Jerusalem put all their 
money together, and rich and poor were served 
alike. They loved each other and showed their love 
by being kind and unselfish. 

Most of them, and Paul also, expected that the 
end of the world would come before very long ; they 
had understood Jesus to say so. When Paul and 
James and John wrote the letters to their friends 
which are translated in our New Testament, they 
had not the least idea that they would be read eigh- 
teen hundred years afterwards. 



286 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

When we think of the little gatherings of Chris- 
tians to whom the apostles wrote letters, we must not 
imagine they were much like our Christian churches. 
They had no such buildings, nor ministers, and each 
of them had only a very little part of the New Tes- 
tament, for it was not yet all written. 

After all the different books were written, they 
were not put together as they are now for a long 
time. At first, many other writings were put in with 
them, but finally those which seemed the best and 
most important were selected from the great number 
of writings, although there was a great deal of quar- 
relling and difference of opinion about it for hun- 
dreds of years. 

After the apostles had died, the good work went on 
and their teaching spread, though at first very slowly. 

The Roman emperors thought the Christians were 
a troublesome people, and for a long time they were 
persecuted so that they had to flee for their lives. 

At Rome there were underground passages like 
those in mines, called Catacombs, which had been 
used for burying the dead. Sometimes the passages 
were very narrow, and sometimes they spread out 
into good-sized rooms. Here many Christians took 
refuge, and when they were not allowed to gather 
together and pray in their own homes, they fled 
down to this place of safety, where by the dim light 
of torches and lamps, they could talk freely and 
pray and sing praises to God. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIANS. 2&? 

They tried to make these dismal places as much 
like a place of worship as they could, and they paint- 
ed the walls with pictures of Jesus as the Good 
Shepherd, and many other cheerful, pleasant pictures, 
which were a comfort to them. 

They buried their dead in the catacombs, and the 
place became very dear to them, for the bodies 
of many saints and martyrs were laid here. A place 
for the body was cut out of the side of a passage- 
way, and after it was laid within, the opening was 
tightly closed by a slab of stone, on which Avas 
often written in Latin words, " Peace be with thee." 

It was the custom of the Roman j^eople to amuse 
themselves by great bloody contests between men 
and beasts, in which the more suffering and cruelty 
there was, the better they were pleased. 

Thousands of them used to meet in a great build- 
ing called the Coliseum, part of which is still stand- 
ing. They sat in circles around an open place in 
the centre, very much as you may have seen people 
at a circus. 

Even women and children went to see these shock- 
ing sights, and laughed with glee at seeing a poor 
human being fighting for his life with a fierce lion 
or hungry tiger. Many prisoners were put to death 
in this way, and their screams of agony were like 
pleasant music to the heartless throng who looked 
down upon them. 

Many Christians, even tender young girls among 



288 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

them, were led out to be tortured and torn in pieces 
for the amusement of the people. They died calmly 
and bravely, and, like St. Paul, were glad they were 
considered worthy to suffer for Christ's sake. 

But at last people began to be convinced that 
there was something in this new religion which was 
better than any thing they had known. When 
their friends died and left them sad and alone, they 
longed to have the same comfort and happiness 
which they saw the Christians feel when they laid 
their dead away. So little by little the number of 
the Christians grew, and the worship of the gods 
became less, until finally the Christians were in power. 

Very curious ideas, which were not at all like 
the teachings of Jesus, were believed by many Chris- 
tians. The Romans and Creeks had paid a great 
deal of attention to bathing and exercising and mak- 
ing their bodies clean and beautiful. They had 
cared a great deal about good food and fine houses 
filled with every thing for their comfort, and temples 
full of beautiful statues. 

Many Christians felt that all these things were a 
great hindrance to the life of the spirit, and the only 
safe way to do was to despise their bodies and think 
as little about them as possible. Some of them 
went months, and even years, without bathing ; they 
went away by themselves and lived in caves and 
desert places, and ate no meat, and sometimes fasted 
for days together. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIANS. 289 

They thought a great deal about death, and often 
kept a skull before them in order to remind them 
that they must soon die. They did not marry or 
make any friends, for fear that they should be 
tempted to forget God, by giving their thoughts to 
worldly things. 

They hated the statues of gods and goddesses 
which adorned the temples and had been made by 
the greatest artists of the world. They cared noth- 
ing for beauty, for the more beautiful these statues 
made the human body appear, the more dangerous 
they thought them to be, and were often glad to 
throw them down and to crush them in pieces. 

All this seems very strange and foolish to us now, 
but it was perfectly natural that under the circum- 
stances they should think as they did, and should 
hate every thing which reminded them of the hea- 
thenism of those who had been so cruel to most of 
them. 

Like many other people who have lived since 
then, they were partly right and partly wrong ; they 
could see only one side of the truth, but after all, it 
was the most important side which they saw ; it was, 
that the inner life of the soul is the real life, and if 
that is only beautiful, it makes less difference if the 
body be poor and weak. 

The great mistake which they made was to think 
that they could please God best by running away 
from their fellow-men, instead of staying in the world 



29O GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

and trying to make it better, and also in imagining 
that God wished to have them give up their natural 
love for their friends and homes. 

We shall never love God more by loving his 
children less. As Saint John wrote in one of his 
letters : " This commandment have we, that he who 
loveth God, love his brother also." 

As time went on and the Romans became Chris- 
tians they did things that were never thought of in 
the time of the apostles, and had many ideas which 
were quite different from those that the apostles 
held. 

The disciples had baptized new converts, as John 
the Baptist had done before them. This was a sign 
that they had begun to lead a new life, and were 
washed clean from the stains .of sin. 

It was a very simple, natural way of showing a 
great truth by an outward sign, just as a flag, which 
is nothing important in itself, stands as the sign of a 
nation, and men in battle will follow the flag, and 
die to save it, because, though it is nothing but a 
piece of cloth itself, it stands for what is very dear 
and precious. 

As time went on, the most superstitious and dread- 
ful ideas began to be connected with this simple act 
of bathing the body in water as a sign that, as the 
body was made clean, so the soul also was washed 
pure and white. 

It was more convenient to sprinkle a little water 



THE FIRST CHRISTIANS. 29 1 

on the head than to clip the whole body in, and so 
after a while this was generally done, and of course 
answered just as well as a sign of the truth for which 
it stood. Just as a flag, whether it be large or small, 
or made of silk or cotton, is a real flag and always 
means the same thing. But the dreadful things of 
which I spoke were, that people came to think that 
the sign itself was important, and Anally it was 
believed that no one, not even little babies, could be 
saved unless they were baptized. 

In the same way, in regard to the Lord's Supper, 
which the disciples kept in memory of the last sup- 
per which they had eaten with Jesus, there grew up 
very strange and false ideas. At first it was a very 
simple thing. The friends of Jesus met together at 
some private house and ate a supper of bread and 
fish, and drank wine mixed with water, and thought 
and talked about their dear Master whom they loved. 

But years after, when the apostles were dead, and 
the simple way of eating this supper was given up, 
it came to have a very different meaning. I have 
not time to tell you of the strange and foolish notions 
which people held about it, and of the fighting and 
quarrelling and hating which came when Christians 
no longer had the spirit of brotherly love which 
Jesus taught. 

They made the same mistake the Jews had made 
so many times, in spite of what the prophets had 
told them, in supposing that if they only went 



292 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

through certain religious forms and ceremonies in a 
particular way, they would please God. 

After it had been pretty well settled as to what 
books should be selected as the sacred ones which 
were to have authority, there was a great deal of 
difference of opinion as to what people ought to 
believe about many religious questions, for they did 
not all understand the New Testament in the same 
way. 

There were bishops, who were men having more 
authority than ordinary preachers, and these bishojDS 
and the leading men of the church met in a great 
council and decided on a certain creed, or statement 
of belief. This creed finally came to be thought 
just as true and important as the words of Jesus 
himself. 

In later times there were other creeds written. 
In our time there are many. Each church has its 
own. They all begin with the words " I believe." 
Perhaps the best known which has come down from 
a very early time is the Apostles' Creed. No one 
knows who wrote it ; it was not by the apostles, we 
are sure. 

At the time when the Christians had been perse- 
cuted they were all of them very brave and noble, 
for no one, who had not been true of heart, would 
have chosen the hard life which they had to live. 

But several hundred years later, when they Avere 
in power, and the rich people were all on their side, 



THE FIRST CHRISTIANS. 293 

it was very different, and it could no longer be said, 

as it was in the beginning : " See how those Chris- 
es o 

tians love one another ! " 

The bishop of Rome finally became very powerful, 
and was made the head bishop of all and called 
Pope, which means papa or father. 

Then for some four or five hundred years came a 
time which has been called the " Dark Ages," because 
the world was full of ignorance and bloodshed, and 
the nations which have since become so great were 
but just beginning to feel their way towards the 
light and liberty which they now enjoy. 

Although every one called himself a Christian, 
scarcely any one seemed to really know him who was 
the " Light of the World." 




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CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE WORLD MOVES. 

ABOUT six hundred years after Jesus was born, 
in a country called Arabia, which was near 
Palestine, there lived a man named Mohammed, who 
founded a religion which is now believed by many 
millions of men. 

Pie believed in Abraham and Moses, and thought 
Jesus was a great prophet, but he believed in him- 
self more than in any one else. He taught a queer 
mixture of what is false and true. One of the best 
things about his teachings was that men should not 
drink liquors or gamble ; one of the worst things 
was that he did not respect women as he ought, and 
allowed his followers to have several wives. 

The religious book of the Mohammedans, which 
is their Bible, is called the Koran. 

Mohammed and his followers did not convert peo- 
ple simply by loving them and telling them the 
truth as Paul did, but they often commanded Jews 
and Christians to become Mohammedans, and made 
war upon them if they did not. A great many peo- 
ple yielded to them rather than suffer death. 

294 




MOHAMMED. 
295 



296 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

After a while they went into Palestine and took the 
city of Jerusalem. From all over the world many 
religious people travelled to Jerusalem, because they 
thought they could come nearer to God and grow 
more holy by going on the long, tiresome journey 
over land and sea and standing on the very spot 
where Jesus and the apostles had lived. 

After the Mohammedans took Jerusalem, Chris- 
tians were not allowed to come except by paying for 
the privilege, and they were often treated shamefully 
and abused. 

At last, the Christians in France and England be- 
came so indignant at this, they determined to put a 
stop to it, and to punish these followers of Mo- 
hammed, who they thought was a false prophet and 
a very wicked man. 

The Pope urged the people on, and hundreds of 
thousands gladly set out to make war against them. 
This was about eight hundred years ago ; it was 
more than one thousand years after Christ, and about 
five hundred years after Mohammed. 

There were several wars carried on by the Chris- 
tians with the hope of getting possession of Jerusa- 
lem, which had become as dear to them as it ever was 
to the Jews. They had to travel more than two 
thousand miles from home, to go among people 
whose language they did not know, and they suffered 
many hardships. Thousands died even before reach- 
ing there. 



THE WORLD MOVES. 297 

These long journeys were called " Crusades." 
There was one crusade of children, but of course the 
poor little things could not fight, and most of them 
died on the way. Although the Christians did get 




MOSQUE IN SPAIN. 

possession of Jerusalem, they lost it again, ana since 
then the Mohammedans have held it the most of the 
time, and have built their churches, which are called 
mosques, on all the places which are considered most 
sacred. 



298 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Never did any heathen show themselves more fool- 
ish and superstitious than did many Christians at this 
time, and for hundreds of years after, until printing 
was invented and people began to be better educated. 

They valued as their most precious treasures any 
thing that Jesus or any of the saints or martyrs had 
ever seen or touched. 

They built magnificent churches, in which were 
caskets or shrines set with gold and jewels, in which 
were kept what was supposed to be bones, teeth, 
and locks of hair from their bodies. Little splinters 
of wood which were believed to have come from the 
very cross on which Jesus had been crucified, were 
especially valued. 

Many very religious people made long journeys to 
these places imagining that they would receive a 
special blessing for doing so. 

Very few people had the New Testament or knew 
any thing about the real teachings of Jesus and Paul. 

The Pope was now become very great and powerful. 
Kings and queens feared him and often did not dare 
to disobey him, lest he should punish them by turn- 
ing them out of the church ; this they dreaded very 
much, for it was believed that any one who did not 
belong to the church would lose his soul and suffer 
forever. 

Little babies were generally baptized about as soon 
as they were born, in order that they might be saved 
from hell if they should die. 



THE WORLD MOVES. 299 

Almost the only people who had any learning 
were the priests and monks. These men were 
obliged to promise never to marry. Some of them 
gave up their whole lives to studying and writing ; 
others went about doing good among the poor, 
choosing to live in a very humble way themselves, 
even going; barefoot and besting from door to door 
for their food. 

The best of these men, after they had died, were 
called saints ; churches were named after them, and 
people even prayed to them, thinking that God would 
hear them better if some holy saint spoke to Him 
for them. 

Two of the noblest and best of these men were 
named St. Francis and St. Bernard. There is a beau- 
tiful Latin poem about heaven which was written by 
St. Bernard, which some time you will read and come 
to love very much. 

Many monks were not at all unselfish and kind, but 
lived a lazy, easy life and did nothing to make the 
world any better. The common people were obliged 
to pay for the support of these men as they never 
earned any money themselves, and they also gave 
vast sums of money to build great cathedrals. As 
people had no newspapers, nor books, nor lectures, 
no photographs, nor pictures, in their houses, and 
very little that was beautiful or interesting, they 
loved to go to the church which was open not only 
on Sundays, but all the time. There they learned 



30O GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS, 

the stories of the saints and apostles from the statues 
and paintings and the beautiful colored windows. 

The grandest pictures which were ever painted 
were made for the churches. Two famous men 
named Michael Angelo and Raphael painted such 
wonderful pictures that now it would take a fortune 
to buy one of them. Their names are honored and 
loved while the names of the lords and dukes of 
their time are almost forgotten. 

I presume, however, you would not enjoy seeing 
their pictures until you have learned more about 
them. You remember I once told you that few peo- 
ple like the best things at first. In pictures, books, 
music, and every thing else, we must always expect 
to enjoy many things by and by which now do not 
interest us. 

During all these years, the Jews, who had been 
driven from Palestine, settled in all the cities of 
Europe. They were a great people ; most of them 
were in the trading or banking business, and many of 
them grew very rich. They kept up their Jewish 
religion and customs, and lived by themselves in 
little, narrow, crowded streets. 

The Christians hated them, and would have noth- 
ing to do with them. I mean those who called them- 
selves Christians, for, as you will see, there were very 
few who followed Christ's teaching about loving their 
neighbors. 

The heathen emperor Nero never was more cruel 



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302 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

to the early Christians, than were the Christians to 
the Jews at a later time. 

Sometimes they drove them out of their country, 
and stole their lands and houses. They told lies 
about them, sometimes saying that the Jews killed 
Christian children, and poisoned wells. This made 
ignorant people so furious against them that they 
killed and burnt alive thousands and thousands of 
them. 

This happened over and over again, and many 
Jews showed themselves to be as brave and noble 
martyrs as any Christians ever were. 

It was not until our own time, eighteen hundred 
years since Jesus came to teach us to love one another, 
that Christian nations gave equal privileges to that 
race to which all the prophets and Christ himself 
belonged. 

The church, that is the Pope and bishops, and 
those in power, were very severe against any one 
who taught any thing opposed to their teachings. 
They felt it must surely be dangerous. They did 
not dare to let people think for themselves, lest 
they should think what was wrong. 

When any one taught what they considered wrong, 
they called it "heresy," and the man himself a 
" heretic." 

A wise man named Galileo studied and made ex- 
periments and discovered many new things. Among 
other things, he taught that the earth moves, which 



THE WORLD MOVES. 303 

most persons did not believe. This was called 
" heresy," and Galileo was put into prison and fright- 
ened into saying that he did not believe it after all. 

It seems very strange that it ever could be thought 
wicked to believe such a thing as this, yet it is true 
that no great new thought has ever been taught, but 
men first hated and fought against it. 

Yes, the world was moving, and in more ways than 
one. The thoughts of men could not be kept silent 
forever ; there were fearless men, who dared to think, 
and were not to be frightened like Galileo into de- 
nying what they knew was true, and now that the 
invention of printing had been made, it was easier 
for new ideas to spread. 

To be sure, many books were forbidden to be 
printed, and were taken and burned if they did get 
printed ; few people knew how to read, even if they 
had a good book, but in spite of all this, a great 
change was beginning to come over the world, and 
after many hundred years, when it had seemed in 
some respects to be going backwards instead of for- 
wards, there came a time when superstition and 
cruelty began to give way, because men came to do 
more thinking and less hating. 




CHAPTER XLV. 



AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 



YOU will see from what I have told you that the 
great trouble had always been that most per- 
sons, even those who were good, had very little idea 
of what God really wanted them to do, any more 
than those Christian hermits had, of whom I have 
told you. 

People had made the strange mistake of suppos- 
ing they must believe what the church taught, with- 
out daring to think or reason for themselves ; they 
thought that men and women who did not marry, 
who ate very little, who beat themselves, said long 
prayers, and made themselves very uncomfortable, 
were more holy than those who lived a natural life 
and used their minds which God had given them in 
thinking out new truths. 

At last there was born a man who helped people 
to see the truth about all this. It came about in 
this way. 

The Pope and great men of the church lived like 
princes and wanted a great deal of money to make 

304 



THE REFORMATION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 305 

their palaces and churches very splendid. Sometimes 
it was got by imposing shamefully on the common, 
ignorant people. 

At one time the Pope's agent offered to save peo- 
ple from future punishment for sin, if they would 
pay money to help him build a great church at Rome. 




LUTHER BURNING THE POPE S BULL. 



There was a good, honest German monk, named 
Martin Luther, who thought it a fearful thing for 
any man, even if he were the head of the church, to 
offer to do this, when only God can do it, and not 
even He, unless men are sorry for their sins. 



306 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

So lie spoke out boldly, and said what he thought 
about it. You have no idea what courage it took in 
those days to dare to say any thing which could be 
called " heresy." 

Very often men and women had to suffer as 
cruelly as the first Christian martyrs did, simply be- 
cause they dared to think for themselves and say 
what they thought. 

Luther became a great leader and reformer, and 
did more than any one to bring about that great 
change in the minds of people, of which I spoke, and 
which was called the Reformation. 

I wish I had time to tell you the wonderful story 
of the life of this great man, to whom you and I owe 
so much. He loved music and children, and you 
must some time get your mamma to read to you the 
charming letters which he wrote to his own children. 
For after a while he freed himself from the rules of 
the church, and was no longer a monk, but married 
and had children of his own. 

As by this time printing had been invented, and 
as Luther translated the Bible into the language of 
his people, those who followed him and were called 
Lutherans took that for their guide, instead of the 
teachings of the church. 

The Bible was now read for the first time by even 
the poorest people, for every one could afford to 
have one. 

Those who broke away from the old church were 



THE REFORM A TION, AND WHA T CAME OF IT. 307 

called Protestants. That is what we call ourselves, 
and those who remained were called Roman 
Catholics. 

The Protestants did not preach a new religion. 
They tried to go back to the old belief which had 
been held by the church at first, before many of the 
later ideas, such as believing in the power of the 
Pope, and praying to saints, had crept in. 

Another great man who was a leader in the 
Reformation was a Frenchman named Calvin. Many 
of the people who lived in our country in your 
grandpapa's time were Calvinists. 

Although Luther and Calvin were great and good 
men, they said very bitter, harsh things against those 
Protestants who did not think as they did, and Calvin 
even consented to have a man burned alive because 
he persisted in saying what was held to be wrong. 

When you come to read the whole story of these 
times, you will find that whoever had the power in 
his hands, whether he were heathen or Christian, 
Roman Catholic or Protestant, always tried to force 
other people to believe what he himself thought was 
right. I dare not tell you much about the fearful 
injustice and cruelty, of the shooting, and torturing, 
and burning, which for hundreds and hundreds of 
years went on wherever any one dared to think 
differently from those who were in power. 

It is so dreadful that one could hardly think of it 
long without having a nightmare. 



., 3° 8 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

Each one of us all owes a great debt to all these 
men who through the ages have dared to think and 
tell their thoughts, even if it cost their lives. "We 
should never have been free and happy if it had not 
been for them. The world would never have grown 
any wiser and better if men and women had chosen 
easy, pleasant lives, and there would have been few 
great thoughts for me to tell you little thinkers. 

"When I was a little girl and went to my church, 
and passed by the difierent churches and Sunday- 
schools where many other children went, I used to 
wonder what was the difference between them all. I 
felt very sure that none of the people in them could 
think quite right, because I thought there was only 
one right kind of church, and that was the one to 
which I went. 

I imagine some of you think the same way, and 
would like to know what makes the difference in all 
these churches which are called Protestant. Why 
is there only one kind of a Roman Catholic church 
and so many different kinds of Protestant churches? 

The reason is this. People have different minds, 
and do not always understand the very same words 
and ideas in at all the same way. The best of people 
sometimes disagree about a subject. So, after the 
Reformation, although the Bible was considered the 
guide for all Protestants, yet, as people began to 
think for themselves, they soon found there was 
going to be a difference of opinion about many 



THE RE FORM A TIOX, AND WHA T CAME OF IT. 309 

things, though never so much difference as between 
Protestants and Roman Catholics. 

The different kinds of Protestant churches did 
not all start at once. In England, the countiy from 
which our people came, the church was more like 
the Roman Catholic than any of the other churches 
which came afterwards. It was just about the same 
as what we call the Episcopal Church. 

The king was at the head of it, and all the people 
in the country were expected to belong to it. They 
turned the beautiful cathedrals into Protestant 
churches. They no longer prayed to saints or said 
Latin prayers which they did not understand. 

They used a prayer-book in their service, and also 
had beautiful music. When boys and girls were 
about fourteen years old they were confirmed by the 
bishop, who put his hands on their heads, while 
they repeated the promises which had been made 
for them when they had been baptized in their 
babyhood. After that they were allowed to go to 
the communion, or Lord's supper. 

There were many things about this great English 
church, which some thoughtful people did not at all 
like. They did not believe that any minister ought 
to be obliged to use a prayer-book and pray what 
other men had written instead of using his own 
words. They thought there were many other things 
in the English Church which were altogether too 
much like the Roman Catholic Church, which they 
feared and hated. 



3IO GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

After a great deal of trouble and persecution, 
which, however, was not quite so terrible as what 
the first Protestants endured, they were finally 
allowed to leave the Church of England and have 
little congregations of their own, where they could 
preach what they pleased. 

The people who left the English Church were 
called Dissenters ; but in America, where the govern- 
ment has nothing to do with the church, and all re- 
ligions are treated in the same way, we do not speak 
of Dissenters. 

There were different divisions among these Dis- 
senters. Some of them were called Presbyterians. 
They had no bishops, but were governed by men 
whom they chose from among themselves. 

They had no prayer-book in their service, and 
many of them in those days did not believe it right 
to have any organ in church or to sing any thing but 
psalms. 

Most of them were very strict indeed about keep- 
ing Sunday in much the same way as the Jews in 
Christ's time had kept the Sabbath. No one was 
allowed to take a walk or do many simple, harmless 
things which both Luther and Calvin had thought 
quite proper to do on Sunday. 

Other Dissenters were called Baptists, because 
they felt very strongly about the importance of 
baptizing only those who were old enough to unite 
with the church, instead of baptizing babies as was 



THE REFORMATION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 311 

done in the other churches ; and they especially 
thought it important, that when any one was bap- 
tized he should be covered all over with water, as 
was probably the custom in the early time, instead 
of having a few drops sprinkled on the forehead. 

It seems strange now that any persons could care 
so much about such unimportant things, and yet 
many were willing to suffer and die rather than give 
up these ideas ; it seems stranger still that any one 
could ever have tried to punish them for such a 
harmless belief. 

Other Dissenters were men and women who be- 
lieved about as the Presbyterians did, except they 
thought that each congregation ought to manage its 
own affairs, and choose its own ministers, and that 
there should be no bishops or councils of outside 
persons who should interfere or have any power over 
them. These people were called Congregationalists. 

For a long time all these Dissenters so hated 
every thing which reminded them of the super- 
stitions of the Roman Catholics, that they would 
not have any pictures of the saints nor of Mary with 
the child Jesus in their houses, and they would not 
observe Christmas and Easter, nor allow a carving of 
a cross on any of their churches. 

All this has changed very much now, as you 
know. People in different churches are coming to 
love each other much better than they used to, and 
think much less about their little differences. 



312 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

One of the most important of the Protestant 
churches, which began much later than any of the 
others, is the Methodist. 

Two brothers, named John and Charles Wesley, 
who lived about one hundred and fifty years ago, 
began to preach to poor, working people, and finally, 
though they did not at first intend it, there grew out 
of their preaching a new religious body which was 
called Methodist and was a little different from any 
other. There are now more Methodists in our 
country than any other kind of Protestants. They 
have done a great deal of good, especially among 
poor and ignorant people. A peculiar custom which 
they have is for each church to change its minister 
once in every three years. 

There are several other kinds of Protestant 
churches having fewer people belonging to them 
than those of wmich I have told you. There are 
good, noble Christians in them all. 

I hope when you are older that each one of you 
will want to join with some one of them. For, as 
you know, when people are loving and working for 
the same thing, they can do much more when they 
work heartily together. 

There has never yet been any kind of church 
which taught all the truth there is to know. So 
whatever we may come to believe ourselves, we must 
always be willing to listen to good people who see 
things differently from us. 



THE REFORMATION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 3^ 

Men and women are no longer burned or put into 
prison, but they are often called hard names, and 
thought to be wicked, because they do not believe 
as other good persons do. 

Probably the time will never come when all wise 
persons will think just alike, but I think there is a 
good time coming when all good people will trust 
each other, and be glad to learn from each other. 
You and I must each try to do a little to help that 
time to come soon. 




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CHAPTER XL VI. 

THOUGHTS ABOUT EVERY-DAY LIFE; OR, TEN COM- 
MANDMENTS FOR YOU AND ME. 

YOU remember in one of the chapters about the 
old Hebrew law-giver, Moses, I told of the 
ten famous laws that he gave his people. These 
contained the truths which it was most important 
for those people to know then, but while those laws 
lie at the foundation of all good living, there are 
other things also which it is well for us to think of. 
I have written some of these thoughts in the form 
of ten new laws, and some of these you will see, if 
you look sharply, are very much like some of those 
which Moses wrote, only they mean not merely what 
he meant, but something more also. Here they are : 

1 . Obey whatever is right. 

2. Always speak the truth. 

3. Be honest. 

4. Be faithful. 

5. Be pure. 

6. Be temperate. 

7. Be modest. 

314 



THO UGHTS ABO UT E VER Y-DA Y LIFE. 3 1 5 

8. Be thoughtful. 

9. Love your Country. 

10. Lend a hand. 

I want to tell you something about each one of 
these, and we will begin with the first one. 

When a little baby is born, it knows less than any 
animal ; a kitten or puppy only three weeks old can 
do many things which a baby cannot do until he is 
two years old. 

A chicken only a month old knows almost as much 
then as it ever will learn, and a fly only a day old 
koows nearly as much as its mother. We find among 
all animals that the shorter their lives are to be, the 
sooner they become able to take care of themselves, 
and they learn all they ever can know very soon 
after they begin to live ; while the longer their 
lives are to be, the less they know when they are 
born. 

Perhaps you do not see what all this has to do 
with obeying, but it has much to do with it as you 
will discover. 

Human beings live longer than most kinds of ani- 
mals, and, as I have said already, they come to know 
infinitely more and are of a great deal more conse- 
quence than animals, because they are immortal souls 
and are children of God. 

Now the greatest man that ever lived began life 
as the most helpless creature that ever was made. 
A new-born baby does not know enough to look 



3l6 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

away from the bright gas-liglit which makes its little 
eyes ache ; it cannot tell its mother's voice from the v 
creaking of a door, and it knows nothing at first but 
how to eat. I once knew a baby old enough to be 
put up to a table in a chair where, as it happened, a 
candle was within her reach, and she put her finger 
into the flame. It burned her terribly, but she did 
not know what was hurting her, and although she 
cried and screamed she did not take her finger away 
from the candle until some one rushed and caught 
her, and although that was over twenty years ago, 
the scar is on her finger still. 

A kitten would have known more than the baby 
did. 

One reason why little cats and dogs and chickens 
know more than babies do is that they would die if 
they could not sooner learn to take care of them- 
selves ; but God has given every baby a mother to 
take care of it ; so, although it is so helpless it does 
not die, for it has kind care for many years until it is 
able to do for itself. 

If babies did not have this tender mother's care, 
they would surely die at once. 

Even among wild, savage people children do not 
become able to take care of themselves until they 
have lived eight or ten years, at least, and among 
people like ourselves, where every one must know a 
great deal before he can get a living, it takes longer. 

If a boy wishes to be well fitted for the work of 



THO UGHTS ABOUT E VER Y-DA Y LIFE. 3 1 7 

the world, it will take him nearly twenty years to 
get ready for it. During all this time lie must be 
taken care of, and have nearly all his food, and 
clothes, and every thing given to him. 

It is not possible for little folks to have any idea 
of the care and trouble and thought which all 
mothers and fathers take, in order to make their chil- 
dren grow strong and healthy and wise and good. 
When I was a little girl I never dreamed how much 
my mother planned and worked for me. 

I knew I ought to mind her, and I supposed the 
reason was that the Bible teaches children to be 
obedient ; but even if the Bible said nothing about 
it, it would be just as true, and you can easily see 
this for yourself. If mothers and fathers have help- 
less, ignorant, little children, and if they spend a 
great deal of money and time on them and take care 
of them and teach them, the very least thing that 
loving little children can do is to obey and do just as 
they are told to clo. Of course you all know this 
well enough, but I am afraid you have never stopped 
to think much about it, and have no idea how 
ungrateful a thing it is not to do exactly as your 
father and mother and teacher bid you. 

Doubtless some of you little folks think grown 
people never have to obey, but can do just as they 
please : now that is a great mistake. We older ones 
are punished just as truly as you are if we do wrong. 

There are a great many kinds of laws which grown 



3*8 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

people have to mind. First, there are the laws of 
health. We are so made that if we live rightly we 
are pretty sure to keep well, but if we break these 
laws by eating too much, or eating things which are 
bad for us, or sitting up too late, or wearing our 
clothes too tight or too thin, we shall suffer for it. 

Then there are the laws of our country which 
men must obey, or else they will be punished by 
being put into prison. Besides this, there are all 
God's laws which must be obeyed. 

If a man is selfish and breaks the law of love, he 
will be punished by finding he has no friends, that no 
one loves him, and he can never have any real, true 
happiness. 

You can see, if you think about it a little, that if any 
one wishes to be happy he must learn to obey : first 
he must obey his parents and teachers and so learn 
from them what is right and what is wrong, and 
when he is grown up he must obey his conscience. 

I never yet knew of a bad man or woman who 
had learned to obey in the right way when a child. 
I have put this at the beginning of these rules for 
being good, because I think it is the first and most 
important thing for every one to think of. 

I have just read what I have written to a little 
girl nine years old, and was surprised to find that a 
great many ideas in this chapter were quite new to 
her. At first she could hardly believe that it would 
be wrong to disobey, if the Bible did not forbid it. 



THO UGH IS ABO UT E VER Y-DA V LIFE. 3 1 9 

So I told her how in many nations, like the 
Chinese, where the Bible has never been known, 
children are taught first of all the duty which they 
owe to their parents. Every one is obliged to be 
very respectful and obedient, and is severely punished 
and disgraced if he is not so. 

Nothing is more plainly written in all nature than 
this law of obedience; it goes down to the very 
depths of our own lives, and until we learn to live 
by it, we are of very little use in the world. 

Perhaps you will think I need not say any thing 
about the second law, for of course even the smallest 
child knows that it is a dreadful thing to tell a lie. 
But although we do not meet many people who tell 
real lies, we find very few who always try to speak 
the exact truth in all things, so I want to say a word 
about it. 

One of the commonest w r ays in which grown peo- 
ple say what is not true is when they say what they 
do not mean in order to seem friendly and polite 
to company. This is very foolish as well as wrong, 
for as soon as people find out that it is their custom 
to flatter and compliment every one, they begin to 
suspect them of not being in earnest even when they 
do really mean what they say. 

One of the commonest ways in which children do 
not speak the truth in all things is in making prom- 
ises which they do not take any pains to keep. 

Did you ever hear the story of the brave old Ko- 



320 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

man, Regulus ? He had been taken prisoner by the 
enemy in time of war and was allowed to go back to 
Rome on condition that he would promise to posi- 
tively return. He went home, and it is said that in- 
stead of advising his countrymen to make peace 
with the enemy he urged them to fight even more 
bitterly, and then, instead of staying at home and 
saving his life, as it was quite easy to do, he returned 
to his captors and died by dreadful tortures which 
he knew he must expect if he kept his word. Regu- 
lus had never heard of the Ten Commandments, but 
he did not need any written law to tell him what was 
written in his own heart, that truth and honor are 
more precious than life. 

Another way of not telling the exact truth, per- 
haps the most common way of all, is in what we call 
" exaggeration " or telling " large stories." Most 
children are very fond of doing this. They want to 
make it appear that something very wonderful has 
happened to them, and so they say " it was perfectly 
elegant," or " awfully mean," or " the most horrid 
thing " they ever saw in their lives. Now, there are 
not many things which truly are " perfectly elegant," 
and very few things, except tornadoes and fierce 
wild beasts and such things, which are really " hor- 
rid " ; so to use such expressions a great many times 
a day about commonplace things is very foolish, al- 
though it does not deceive any one, for we all under- 
stand that it means nothing. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT EVERY-DAY LIFE. 321 

But our word should mean something ; and if we 
do not take pains to tell what we have seen and 
heard just as it is, if we care so much to attract 
people's interest in what we are saying as to make 
the story larger than it is, we have gone a long way 
towards breaking one of the most important of all 
these new commandments. 

Perhaps the one which is the hardest of all to 
keep, is the one about being faithful. This word has 
two meanings : sometimes it means to be true and 
loyal to any thing that we believe, or to any one 
whom we love. People who are very changeable in 
their feelings and easily forget what thay have once 
cared for, make very unfaithful friends. When we 
speak of any one being unfaithful about his work, 
the word has a little different meaning. An un- 
faithful child is a careless one who cannot be trusted 
to do his work well Avhen he is not being watched, 
and who thinks it too much trouble to be exact and 
particular about little things. 

But we know that it is only by being " faithful 
over a few things," as Jesus said, that we are ever 
going to be fit to do great things. 

I think the most blessed thing which could be 
said of any one of us when the end of this earthly 
part of our life shall come, is the " Well done, thou 
good and faithful servant." To look back on a life 
in which every little duty had been done, no matter 
how hard and tiresome it was, and to know that we 



322 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

had been faithful and true to the best that we knew, 
why that would be the sweetest thought that could 
come to us. It would be heaven itself. 

Jesus said that " the pure in heart are blessed, for 
they shall see God." Yes, and it is only the pure in 
heart who ever can see God. 

We speak of our minds being " pure," just as we 
speak of our hands being clean ; that is, we mean that 
no vile words or foul thoughts have stained our 
minds, just as no dirt has soiled our hands. There is 
one great difference, however, between the two 
things. We can easily wash our hands clean, and 
even if there are ink stains on them they will come 
off in a few days, but until the last day of your life, 
you will never be able to get out of your mind the 
nasty thoughts and words which you may have once 
let into it. If any boy or girl wants to whisper 
secrets to you which you would be ashamed to talk 
about with your mother, run away as you would run 
from some one who was trying to give you poison. 

There are many things in this wonderful life of 
ours which are so sacred that to speak or think of 
them thoughtlessly and irreverently is very wrong. 
If we would have our minds clean and sweet, as well 
as our bodies, we must see to it that we fill them 
with good, happy thoughts, and leave no room for 
any others to creep in. 

When I say, " be temperate," perhaps you think I 
mean, " do not drink any wine or beer." Yes, I 



THO UGH TS ABOUT E VER Y-DA Y LIFE. 323 

mean that, and I mean a great deal more than that 
also. Being temperate means being moderate, not 
going too far. Now for children to drink liquors at 
all would be going too far, and I suppose none of 
you have any temptation to do that at present. The 
temptation to be intemperate for you comes in quite 
another way. 

Drinking coffee or tea, or any thing stronger than 
chocolate or lemonade or milk is bad for children. 
Eating rich pastry and much candy, sitting up late 
at night, and all such things which injure the body, 
are those in which children generally are intemperate. 
All kinds of extravagance in using too strong lan- 
guage, in dressing too richly, in spending more 
money than one can afford, — in fact, going too far in 
any direction, is being intemperate, and leads to a 
great many worse things. 

To be modest is a thing which is particularly hard 
for American boys and girls, because, in this coun- 
try, in the last few years, children have been allowed 
to talk so much before older people and to tell what 
they think, that they find it very hard to remember 
their opinion is not worth so much as that of those 
who are older and wiser. It used to be thought a 
very dreadful thing for a boy to rush into a room 
before his mother and take the best chair, or for a 
little girl to interrupt and contradict ; but we see so 
much of these rude ways among our bright boys and 
girls nowadays, that it makes one feel doubly glad 
when one finds a really modest child. 



3^4 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

There is one kind of modesty, however, which we 
sometimes see, which is a sham modesty, and is 
worse than none. That is when people talk about 
their own things in such a way as to try to get a com- 
pliment. "My writing-book looks dreadfully, I 
know I shall get a low mark," says one little girl, 
who knows she is a good writer, and who says this 
in order to hear her friend's reply : " No, indeed, 
yours is a great deal better than mine." 

When I say " be thoughtful," of course you know 
I do not mean to have you sober and quiet all the 
time. That would be dismal indeed. No, I simply 
mean to say that neither you nor I can get on in 
this world, or any other world, unless we do a good 
deal of thinking and learn to think aright. Some 
persons find it easy to think about the little things 
in their every-day life, but hard to think about the 
larger life outside their own little circle in which 
they have a share. 

Others find this easy, but are careless and forget- 
ful about the little things which we cannot afford to 
forget if we want to have our life go smoothly 
without any trouble to other people. 

You see we must learn to think in both directions, 
and we must not forget that merely wishing to do 
the right thing will amount to nothing, unless we 
take the pains to think, for 

41 Evil is wrought, by want of thought 
As well as want of heart." 



CHAPTER XLVII. 



LAST THOUGHTS. 



I WANT to give a whole chapter to the last two 
of those ten thoughts of which I have just told 
you, because they are the very two which I am sure 
you never thought much about. I am ashamed to 
say I never thought much about loving my country 
until I was twice as old as some of you are. It is a 
very strange thing that most people, even those who 
are grown up and ought to know better, never 
realize that next to God they owe more to their 
country than to any person or any thing in the whole 
world. 

" What ? ■' you ask, " do I owe more than to mam- 
ma and papa, who give me food and clothes and 
everything ? I don't see that our country gives 
me anything." 

Now let us see. Suppose that you lived in a 
land Avhere there was no government and had 
never been one, and all the people were wild sav- 
ages, and had always been so. What could your 
father and mother do for you % 

325 



326 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

They could give you coarse food, which you would 
eat with your fingers, sitting on the ground with the 
others around a camp-fire. They could teach you to 
swim and hunt and fish, and your mother could 
make you one suit of clothes a year out of the 
skins of the animals which your father had killed. 

She might love you very much, but she could do 
little more for you than that ; and if you were a 
little girl she would teach you to carry burdens, to 
do all the dirty work of the camp, to wait on your 
brother, and to remember that as you were a girl 
you must not think yourself of half so much impor- 
tance as he was. 

Now if you had no father or mother living, and 
yet you were in a country like ours, although you 
might be a poor, forlorn little creature living in a 
poorhouse or orphan asylum, you would hardly be 
so badly off as a little savage child who never would 
have a chance to know any thing, and who would 
very likely be some day murdered in a fight be- 
tween the tribes of wild men. 

Let us see what a country like ours does for us. 
In the first place, by means of the laws and the 
courts and the officers who carry out the laws, it is 
made a very safe place for us to live in, and children 
and all weak persons are usually well protected. In 
a savage country the strong can injure the weak as 
much as they please, and there is no way to hinder 
or punish them. 



LAST THOUGHTS. Z 2 7 

There are many countries also which are not sav- 
age, but have governments of a poor kind, where the 
poor and weak get very little help, and millions of 
children are allowed to grow up without learning to 
read. 

But in our country there are few children born 
who do not have some chance to learn, and in many 
cities children can go to school ten months in the 
year for twelve or fifteen years, can have pleasant, 
warm rooms, plenty of books and pictures, good 
teachers, and all for nothing. 

It seems to me a very thoughtless thing for any 
child who has all this given him to forget that this 
is a gift for which he owes something in return. He 
owes it to the city to be careful not to scratch, or 
break, or tear any of the things in the school-house, 
and to study and learn all he can, so as to pay the 
city by becoming, as we say, a " good citizen." 

The city does a great many other things for us. 
It builds waterworks and lays pipes and sends water 
into every house, so . that by paying a very little 
money we can have all the water we want, and do 
not have to go to the great trouble of digging our 
own wells and pumping up our own water. The city 
gives us street lights, so that it is not so unsafe for 
people to walk about at night as it used to be in old 
times when the streets were all dark. It pays the 
firemen to hurry to our houses to put out the fire 
if one should start ; it paves the streets, and does a 



328 GREAT THOUGHTS TOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

thousand things to hiake us comfortable and happy, 
which I do not believe you ever thought of. 

One great blessing which comes from living in 
this United States is that we do not have a large 
army. There are very few soldiers, and, while other 
countries are becoming poorer on account of the 
great number of soldiers which they must support 
all the time, our country is growing richer. And 
what is best of all is that the fathers and brothers 
do not have to go off to the army, but can stay at 
home, for the whole land is at peace. 

There is another thing about our country, which I 
suppose I hardly need to tell you, and this is that 
every man, black or white, rich or poor, can vote. 
In some lands only the rich, the nobles, and the royal 
family, have any thing to say about how the country 
shall be governed. The poor, common people must 
fight and do what they are told to do, whether they 
want to or not. But in the United States every 
poor man may have something to say about the gov- 
ernment, and more than one poor, barefoot boy, who 
lived in a log cabin, has come to be a President when 
he was a man. 

There is no country in the whole world where 
every one can be so free and so happy, and have so 
good a chance to improve in every way, as right here 
in our own dear land. 

But, in spite of this, very few people are grateful 
enough for these blessings, and most men are too 



LAST THOUGHTS. 329 

thoughtless or selfish to be willing to take much 
trouble to see that the laws are kept good, and that 
bad and ignorant men shall not be elected. 

It is because I want you to grow up with a very 
different feeling about this, that I have written as 
one of the most important commands: "Love your 
country." You cannot love it if you clo not know 
something about it, so I hope you will begin to learn 
all you can about it, and of the great and noble men 
who have lived here, from the brave old Pilgrim 
Fathers down to the great poets and soldiers of our 
own time. 

We belong to the whole human race, and we owe 
that a debt, too, as well as our country. 

Let us see how. Suppose no one had ever lived 
before, and Ave were the very first persons to live on 
the earth. And suppose that we had to begin to 
find out for ourselves all the things which people 
have learned in the last ten thousand years or more. 

Suppose we had no churches, no houses, no furni- 
ture or clothes, no tame animals like the horse or ox, 
who had been trained to work for us, no tools, no 
machinery, no books, hardly a language even, and no 
idea of how to go to Avork to make any thing. 

Just think hoAv miserable and helpless Ave should 
be! 

I showed you in some of the first chapters Avhat a 
long, tiresome process it Avas to find out some of the 
things Avhich seem so easy to us, such as making a 



330 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

fire, and using wheels. If you remember that, I 
think you will begin to get a little idea of how 
much we owe to all the people who have lived 
before us, because they have made it possible for us 
to begin, not where they began, but where they left 
off. 

Now would it not be the best thing in the world 
if each one of us could do a little to make it easier 
and better for those who come after us, and so help 
pay the great debt which we owe to those who came 
before us ? 

You see when we owe a debt to our country and 
to all the people whose thoughts have helped us, it 
is such a very, very large debt that we could not 
possibly pay it. If we did the most that we could, 
we should have scarcely begun to pay it. 

We can never pay those who have lived before us 
and are dead, and the most we can do is to pass 
along to others the good things which have come to 
us, and to try to help those who come after us, as 
we have been helped by the people who lived be- 
fore us. 

Here. is a sweet little story, which is a true one, 
and will show you just what I mean. 

Most of the black people who live at the South 
are poor, and many of them have not been to school 
much, for they have had to work hard all their lives, 
and have had no chance to learn. 

A few kind persons at the North have given 



LAST THOUGHTS. 33 1 

money to provide schools for thein, and, at a place 
called Hampton, there is a fine, large school, where 
many colored people are studying hard, and are 
learning to be teachers. 

Some years ago, there was among these scholars a 
poor black girl who was very ill ; the doctors did 
not know what was the matter with her, and they 
thought she would die. A kind lady, who was a 
doctor, was visiting at Hampton, and she felt sorry 
for the poor girl, and she said she would help her. 
So she took her North, into her own home in New 
York, and treated the black girl as kindly as if she 
had been her sister. 

She bathed her, fed her, watched over her, aud 
studied her illness until she found what was the 
trouble, and then gave her medicine and took care 
of her for over a year, until she was strong and 
well. 

The girl came to love this good lady very dearly, 
and when the time came for her to go back to the 
South a^ain she said to her kind friend: "I wish I 
could do something for you to show you how much 
I thank you for being so very good to me. I have 
a little money, about a hundred dollars, which has 
been given me, and I want to give it to you ; I wish 
I could give you more, but I cannot, this is all I 
have." 

But the doctor answered : " Oh, no, Mollie ; you 
must not give me your money. I don't want to be 



33 2 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

paid; that is not the Christian way to do; when 
people do you a kindness, you must not pay them 
back, you must pass it along to some one else who 
needs it. Now, instead of paying me, you must 
pay the debt by working for your people ; you must 
pass along to them whatever I have done for you." 

So the girl went South. She was very small, but 
as she was old enough and knew enough to teach, 
she found a school and went to work. About two 
years later, the doctor went South again, and Mollie 
came to see her, and brought her a nice present of a 
cake and some eggs and dried currants. She was as 
happy as she could be to see her kind friend again, 
and began telling her about her school. 

She said the children she taught were very poor 
and ragged ; their mothers did not know how to 
sew, and therefore she had started two sewing 
classes for the mothers and the girls, and taught 
them on Saturdays and in the evenings, although 
she was very tired from teaching all day in the school. 
Sometimes she mended the children's clothes her- 
self, so they could come to school neat and tidy. 
Their mothers did not teach them to keep clean at 
home, so she kept a basin of water and some towels 
at school, and taught them to wash their faces and 
hands. 

On Sunday they had no Sunday-school, and there 
was no one to teach them about God, so she started 
a Sunday-school herself, and taught them as she did 



LAST THOUGHTS. 333 

on all the other days of the week; she got very 
tired, but she said she was glad to do it, for they 
were so ignorant and so glad to learn. 

" I hope you get a good salary, I arn sure," said 
the lady. " You ought to be well paid when you 
work so hard." 

" Oh, no," said the girl, very simply, " I have no sal- 
ary ; I work for nothing." 

" Why, how can that be ? " asked the lady, in sur- 
prise. 

" Oh, you see," said Mollie, "that was what you did 
for me, and so I have passed it along." 

The tears filled the lady's eyes, and mine too, 
when she told me the story, and we thought of this 
sweet, unselfish girl, who found her greatest joy in 
making one little corner of the world better and 
happier, because she was so thankful for what had 
been done for her. 

You little folks cannot do great things like this .' 
you cannot take care of sick people, as the doctor 
did, nor teach poor children, as Mollie did, and you 
cannot give much money away ; but let us see if 
there not some very important things you can do if 
you mean to be kind and " lend a hand." 

Of course the best way to begin to lend a helping 
hand is by trying to be thoughtful and kind about 
all sorts of little every-day matters at home. 

It shows a great deal more real kindness for you 
to take pains and step softly and try to amuse the 



334 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

baby when mamma has a headache, than it does to 
give a great many handsome Christmas presents to 
your friends. 

For probably the money for the presents would 
have been given to you, and there is no kindness in 
giving what costs us nothing. No doubt you can 
yourself think of dozens of ways of doing many lit- 
tle helpful things at home, so I will tell you only of 
some things which you can do to " lend a hand " in 
the great world outside of home, where there are so 
many people who need what you can give them. 

I think you will find that you can pass along to 
them a great many of the good things which have 
come into your life. 

If you go to the public school, you no doubt see 
there some little children who do not dress very well, 
and some who come from homes where they are not 
taught good manners. 

Now there are many kind little ways in which you 
can make the child with patched, old-fashioned 
clothes feel that you think just as much of him as 
though he were well dressed, and there are many 
ways in which you can make your good manners in- 
duce others to be polite. 

When children thoughtlessly get together, and 
whisper secrets about their mates, and look at each 
other and laugh as if they were making sport of the 
others, a polite, kind-hearted child will easily see 
that this is not doing as she would be done by, and 



last thoughts. 335 

will have no share in such rudeness. It will not take 
you long to think of many ways in which you can 
help the teacher by saving her trouble, and by a 
sunny face and friendly manners make all the chil- 
dren happy when they are with you. 

But now let me tell you of some of the ways in 
which you can send help to those whom you never 
see. In the South, where so many colored people 
live, there are many places where the people are so 
poor that they cannot afford to have schools more 
than two or three months of the year. The children 
live in poor little cabins, and have no pictures or nice 
books, and nothing to make their dull, hard life 
beautiful. 

Now one of the things which you could easily do, 
would be to get all the charmiDg picture papers and 
magazines which you and your friends take, and send 
to these poor little children, who never saw a 
Youth's Companion, or St. Nicholas, or Wide 
Atvahe, and very likely never even had a Christmas 
card. 

It would not cost a great deal to send a package 
of these, or to send one at a time as they come to you. 
If you really care much about it, you can easily in- 
terest the older people to help you about it, and find 
just where to send them. 

If you live in the country, perhaps you can have 
a little flower-garden of your own, and raise flowers 
to send into town to the Flower Mission, which takes 



33 6 GREAT THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE THINKERS. 

theni to the sick people in the hospitals. I know of 
some little folks who do this, and of others who 
make picture scrap-books to send to the Children's 
Hospital. 

If you live in a large city, there are no doubt 
hundreds of children within a mile of you who are 
often cold and hungry, and who not once in the year 
have so good a time as you have every day. 

Of course you cannot go alone to their homes, so 
you cannot often see them, but there are some ways 
in which you can help them if you really care much 
about doing so. 

I will tell you a true story of what one little girl 
only eight years old did. She had two cents given her 
to start with, and she thought she would see how much 
she could earn with it all by herself. So she bought 
some mending cotton with it, and darned stockings, 
for which her mother paid her, so that with her own 
hands she earned enough to buy a dress for a poor 
child. 

All these things seem rather small, but they are 
not too small for Him who notices even a sparrow's 
fall, to see and remember them. And the best thing 
about lending a helping hand, is that one little kind- 
ness leads to another, so that when a good thing is 
begun it goes on and makes kind thoughts and pleas- 
ant deeds, and one can never tell when it will end. 

And now, with this last thought, we must say 
good-bye. 



LAST THOUGHTS. 



337 



I hope I have helped to straighten out and put in 
order in your mind some of the many things which 
you have wondered about and only half understood. 

I hope that this wonderful earth, with its strange 
history, will be more interesting to you than ever 
before, and that you will want to " lend a hand " to 
help make it better in the time to come than it ever 
was in the past. 

I have tried to pass along to you little thinkers, 
the greatest thoughts I know. If you once get them 
into your heads and hearts, you can never be really 
poor, for these are the best things there are, and 
they are free to all. 

" 'T is heaven alone, that is given away. 
'T is only God may be had for the asking." 









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^^^^K^i&^^^ 





The Story of the Nations. 



Messrs. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS take pleasure in 
announcing that they have in course of publication a 
series of historical studies, intended to present in a 
graphic manner the stories of the different nations that 
have attained prominence in history. 

In the story form the current of each national life will 
be distinctly indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy 
periods and episodes will be presented for the reader in 
their philosophical relation to each other as well as to 
universal history. 

It is the plan of the writers of the different volumes to 
enter into the real life of the peoples, and to bring them 
before the reader as they actually lived, labored, and 
struggled — as they studied and wrote, and as they amused 
themselves. In carrying out this plan, the myths, with 
which the history of all lands begins, will not be over- 
looked, though these will be carefully distinguished from 
the actual history, so far as the labors of the accepted 
historical authorities have resulted in definite conclusions. 

The subjects of the different volumes will be planned 
to cover connecting and, as far as possible, consecutive 
epochs or periods, so that the set when completed will 
present in a comprehensive narrative the chief events in 
the great STORY OF THE NATIONS ; but it will, of course 



not always prove practicable to issue the several volumes 
in their chronological order. 

The "Stories" are printed in good readable type, and 
in handsome i2mo form. They are adequately illustrated 
and furnished with maps and indexes. They are sold 
separately at a price of $1.50 each. 

The following is a partial list of the subjects thus far 

determined upon : 

THE STORY OF *ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. George Rawlinson. 
" *CHALDEA. Z. A. Ragozin, 
" *GREECE. Prof. James A. Harrison, 

Washington and Lee University. 
" *ROME. Arthur Gilman. 
" *THE JEWS. Prof. James K. Hosmer, 

Washington University of St. Louis. 
41 *CARTHAGE. Prof. Alfred J. Church, 

University College, London. 
" BYZANTIUM. 

" *THE GOTHS. Henry Bradley. 
" *THE NORMANS. Sarah O. Jewett. 
" *PERSIA. S. G. W. Benjamin. 
" *SPAIN. Rev. E. E. and Susan Hale. 
•' ^GERMANY. S. Baring-Gould. 
" THE ITALIAN REPUBLICS. 
" HOLLAND. Prof. C. E. Thorold Rogers. 
" *NORWAY. IIjalmar H. Boyesen. 
" *THE MOORS IN SPAIN. Stanley Lane-Poole. 
" ^HUNGARY. Prof. A. VAmbery. 
" THE ITALIAN KINGDOM. W. L. Alden. 
" " EARLY FRANCE. Prof. Gustave Masson. 

" ^ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. Prof. J. P. Mahaffy. 
" THE HANSE TOWNS. Helen Zimmern. 
" *ASSYRIA. Z. A. Ragozin. 
" *THE SARACENS. Arthur Gilman. 
" *TURKEY, Stanley Lane-Poole. 
•' PORTUGAL. H. Morse Stephens. 
" MEXICO. Susan Hale. 
" ^IRELAND. Hon. Emily Lawless. 
" PHCENICIA. 
" SWITZERLAND. 
" RUSSIA. 
" WALES, 
" " SCOTLAND. 

" *MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA. 

Z. A. Ragozfn. 

* (The volumes starred are now ready, June, 1888.) 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
New York London 

27 and 29 West Twenty-Third Street 27 King William Street, Stka^.d 



I Editors. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 
IN PREPARATION. 

THE SCRIPTURES, 

HEBREW AND CHRISTIAN. 
EDITED AND ARRANGED FOR YOUNG READERS. 

Rev. EDWARD T. BARTLETT, A.M., 
Dean of the Divinity School of the P. E. Church in Philadel- 
phia, and Mary Wolfe, Prof, of Ecclesiastical History. 

Rev. JOHN P. PETERS, Ph.D., 

Professor of the Old Testament Literature and Language in the 
Divinity School of the P. E. Church in Philadelphia. 

The work is to be completed in three volumes, containing each about 
500 pages. 

Vol. I. will include Hebrew story from the Creation "to the time of Nehe- 
miah, as in the Hebrew canon. 

Vol. II. will be devoted to Hebrew poetry and prophecy. 

Vol. III. will contain the selections from the Christian Scriptures. 

The volumes will be handsomely printed in i2mo form, and with an open, 
readable page, not arranged in verses, but paragraphed according to the 
sense of the narrative. 

Each volume will be complete in itself, and will be sold separately at a 
price of about $1.50. 

The first volume is expected to be in readiness before the close of 1885. 

The editors say in their announcement : " Our object is to remove stones 
of stumbling from the path of young readers by presenting Scriptures to them 
in a form as intelligible and as instructive as may be practicable. This plan 
involves some re-arrangement and omissions, before which we have not hesi- 
tated, inasmuch as our proposed work will not claim to be the Bible, but an 
introduction to it. That we may avoid imposing our own interpretation 
upon Holy Writ, it will be our endeavor to make Scripture serve as the 
commentary on Scripture. In the treatment of the Prophets of the Old 
Testament and the Epistles of the New Testament, it will not be practica- 
ble entirely to avoid comment, but no attempt will be made to pronounce 
upon doctrinal questions." 

The first volume will be divided into five parts : 
Part I. — Hebrew Story, from the Beginning to the Time of Saul. 
" II. — The Kingdom of all Israel. 
" III. — Samaria, or the Northern Kingdom. 

" IV. — JUDAH, FROM REHOBOAM TO NEHEMIAH. 

" V. — Hebrew Laws and Customs. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 

In the appendix to the first volume, it is proposed to give some extracts 
from the Talmud and translations from contemporary inscriptions of the 
Assyrians and other nations, bearing upon the events of Hebrew history. 

The second volume will comprise selections from the distinctively poetical 
works, such as Psalms, Ruth, Lamentations, Job, and the Wisdom Litera- 
ture, and also such poetical compositions and fragments as are found in the 
historical and prophetical portions of the Old Testament, like The Song of 
the Well in Numbers, The Song of the Sea in Exodus, Deborah's Song, The 
Blessing of Jacob, etc. 

It will also contain the selections from the prophecies ; grouped, as far as 
possible, around the persons of the individual prophets, telling the story of 
the prophet by and with his prophecies. As an appendix to this volume will 
be added a section covering the history and intellectual development of the 
period intervening between Malachi and Jesus. 

The third volume will comprise the selections from the New Testament, 
arranged as follows : 

I. — The Gospel according to St. Mark, Presenting the Evan- 
gelical Story in its Simplest Form ; Supplemented by 
Selections from St. Matthew and St. Luke. 
II. — The Acts of the Apostles, with some Indication of the 
Probable Place of the Epistles in the Narrative. 
III. — The Epistles of St. James, and the First Epistle of St. Peter. 
IV. — The Epistles of St. Paul. 
V. — The Epistle to the Hebrews. 
VI. — The Revelation of St. John (A Portion). 
VII.— The First Epistle of St. John. 
VIII. —The Gospel of St. John. 

Full details of the plan of the undertaking, and of the methods adopted 
by the editors in the selection and arrangement of the material, will be found 
in the separate prospectus. 



" I am very favorably impressed with the plan of the Scriptures for Young 
People, and I think such a work will be well suited for gaining the attention 
of the young, and to render the study of the Bible more interesting and in- 
structive." Rt. Rev. ALFRED LEE, 

Presiding Bishop of the P. E. Church. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. Publishers, 
New York and London. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

CHIVALRIC DAYS AND YOUTHFUL DEEDS. 

By E S Brooks. Profusely illustrated . . . $2 00 

CHIVALRIC DAYS tells the story of certain notable scenes and occa- 
sions in the world's history in which the boys and girls of the long ago 
had both part and lot. 

" Chivalric Days " is written in the same entertaining style that made the 
author's " Historic Boys" one of the leading holiday books of last year. 
It, however, comprises stories of the girls as well as the boys of the past, 
and each story is brightened with glimpses of the queer customs and cos- 
tumes, the manners and the home-life of those far-off days. 




1 OH, SIR,' SAID DOLLY, ' LET THE CHILD GO ! ' 
(Reduced from lk Chivalric Days.") 

" Chivalric Days " contains : Cinderella's Ancestor ; The Favored of Baal ; The Gage of 
a Princess ; The T ell-Tale Foot ; " The Rede of the Elves " ; The Boys of Blackfriars : 
The Cloister of the Seven Gates ; The Story of the Field of the Cloth of Gold— I. How 
Rauf Bulney Spoiled H is Crimson Cloak ; II. How the Kings Met in the Golden Valley ; 
III. How Margery Carew Got Her Glittering Chain ; IV. How the Queens Dined with- 
out Eating ;— " Monsieur, the Captain of the^Caravel "—I. The Gentlemen Volunteers ; 
II. In English Waters ; III. The Battle ;-The Little Lord of the Manor. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 




ING ARTHUR AND 
HIS KNIGHTS OF 

THE ROUND TABLE. 



By Margaret Vere Farrington. With 29 
Illustrations by Fredericks and others. 8vo, 
cloth . . . . . $2 00 

This volume has been prepared with the hope 
of interesting Young America in the legends of 
the land of his forefathers, while those who are 
fond of " Idyls of the King " may gain a better 
historical understanding of the Arthur romance. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



HISTORIC BOYS: Their Endeavors, Their Achieve- 
ments, and Their Times. By E. S. Brooks. 29 full-page 
illustrations. Beautifully printed and bound . . $2 00 




"HARRY OF MONMOUTH DASHED TO HIS FATHER'S AID." 
(Reduced from " Historic Boys.") 

HISTORIC BOYS has been written with a twofold purpose : to increase 
the interest of young readers in historical study, and to show that, even 
from the earliest ages, manliness and self-reliance have been the chief 
groundwork of character, and that opportunities for action exist to-day 
with the boys and girls of this nineteenth century, even as they did ages 
ago with young Marcus in the forum of Rome, or with young Harry of 
Monmouth striving for victory on the bloody field of Shrewsbury. 

The tales include : Marcus of Rome, the boy magistrate of sixteen (a.d. 137) ; Brian of 
Munster, the boy chieftain, (a.d. 948); Olaf of Norway, the boy viking (a.d. ioio) ; 
William of Normandy, the boy knight of twelve (a.d. 1040) ; Baldwin of Jerusalem, the 
boy crusader (a.d. 1147) ; Frederick of Hohenstaufen, the sad little beggar prince (a.d. 
1207) ; Harry of Monmouth, the brilliant boy general of seventeen (a.d. 1402) ; Giovanni 
of Florence, the bey cardinal (a.d. 1490) ; Ixtlil of Tezcuco, the fierce young captain (a.d. 
I 5 I 5) \ Louis of Bourbon, the headstrong boy king (a.d. 1651) ; Charles of Sweden, the 
boy conqueror (a.d. 1699) ; Van Rensselaer of Rensselaerswyck, the patriotic boy patroon 
(A.D. 1777). 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

HISTORIC GIRLS : Stories of girls who have influenced 
the history of their times. By E. S. Brooks. Profusely 
illustrated ■ . . . $2 00 

In these progressive days when so much, energy and discussion are de- 
voted to what is termed equality and the rights of women, it is well to 
remember that there have been in the distant past women, and girls even, 
who by their actions and endeavors proved themselves the equals of the 
men of their time in valor, shrewdness, and ability. 

This volume seeks to tell for the girls and boys of to-day the stories of 
some of their sisters of the long ago — girls who by eminent position or 
valiant deeds became historic even before they had passed the charming 
season of girlhood. 




"EDITH OF SCOTLAND." 
(Reduced from " Historic Girls/') 



Their stories are fruitful of varying lessons ; for some of these historic girls 

were wilful as well as courageous, and mischievous as well as tender-hearted. 

Contents of HISTORIC GIRLS : Zenobia of Palmyra, the Girl of the Syrian Desert ; 
Helena of Britain, The Girl of the Essex Fells ; Pulcheria of Constantinople, The Girl of 
the Golden Horn ; Clotilda of Burgundy, The Girl of the French Vineyards ; Woo of 
Hwang-ho, The Girl of the Yellow River; Edith of Scotland, the Girl of the Norman 
Abbey ; Jacqueline of Holland, The Girl of the Land of Fogs ; Catarina of Venice, The 
Girl of the Grand Canal ; Theresa of Avila, The Girl of the Spanish Sierras ; Elizabeth 
of Tudor, The Girl of the Hertford Manor ; Christina of Sweden, The Girl of the 
Northern Fiords ; Ma-ta-oka of Pow-ha-tan, The Girl of the Virginia Forests. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

Robert Fulton and Steam Navigation. By Thos. W. 
Knox, editor of " The Travels of Marco Polo," author of 
" Boy Travellers in the East," etc., etc. One large i2mo 
volume, profusely illustrated $i 75 




This book tells the story of a life of constant activity and usefulness, 
and describes the rise and progress of steam navigation in a manner most 
remarkable and clear. It is free from technical terms of all description, 
and is written in that charmingly narrative and picturesque form for which 
Mr. Knox is so justly famous. 

The book is composed of 500 pages, and contains 82 elegant engravings, 
which go to emphasize its usefulness. 

The early struggles of Fulton to get recognition for his inventions, his 
perseverance, and his dogged determination to succeed, are depicted 
forcefully and sympathetically. All the great ocean, war, and river 
steamers of the century, their principles of construction, the gradual evo- 
lution of speed by means of improved application of the original idea, and 
the development of the original crude machinery, are described and exem- 
plified by numerous illustrations. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Noah Brooks. Crown 
octavo, with many illustrations . . . $i 75 



s 4^M^S^w, 




LINCOLN S WRESTLE WITH ARMSTRONG. 
(Reduced from " Life of Abraham Lincoln.") 

" In writing this brief biography, I have been moved by a desire to give 
the generation of young people, who will never know aught of Abraham 
Lincoln but what is traditional, a life-like picture of the man as many men 
knew him. . . . Many things relating to his early life herein set down 
were derived from his own lips, often during hours of secluded companion- 
ship." — From Author s Preface. 

" An excellent and timely book." — New Albany Ledger. 

"An admirably written book." — Buffalo Christian Advocate. 

4 ' It is a capital book." — Pittsburgh Chronicle. 

" A more interesting biography we have not read." — Hartford Times. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London 






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